The Covent Garden Murder

The Blitz Detective #8

by Mike Hollow

December, 1940. Christmas is coming, but the season of goodwill is overshadowed by the death and destruction of the Blitz. In London's Covent Garden, where the glamour of theatreland rubs shoulders with the bustle of the capital's biggest fruit and vegetable market, the war has closed the theatres and ruined the market trade.


When a daylight air raid hits the Prince Albert Theatre in Drury Lane, rescuers find a man dying in the wreckage. But it wasn't the bomb that's ending his life - he's been stabbed, and with his dying breath he whispers what sounds like a fragmented confession. As Detective Inspector John Jago begins to investigate, there's an underlying question he must grapple was the murdered man himself a killer?

Genres: Historical Fiction, Audiobook, Historical, Crime, Mystery, World War II, Fiction

328 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 19, 2023

About the author

I first got into print when I was eleven. A boys’ comic published a feeble limerick I’d sent them and paid me five shillings, a fat sum at that age. But the postal order was nothing compared with seeing my words in print.

After that I kept writing – teenage poems for a late-1960s “underground magazine”, then grown-up poems, and later a happy mix of copywriting, journalism, editing and translating. All ways of getting paid for playing with words.

My CV? I was born in 1953 in the Essex County Borough of West Ham – home of the Blitz Detective – on the eastern edge of London. I grew up mainly in Romford and went to the Royal Liberty School, then studied Russian and French at Cambridge University.

My first job was translating for the BBC, and I did various jobs there for sixteen years before moving to work in communications for development agency Tearfund, travelling widely in Africa, Asia and Latin America. In 2002 I went freelance as a writer, editor and creative project manager. Now I earn a living by translating and spend the rest of my time in the cellar of my house in Hampshire chronicling the adventures of the Blitz Detective.

Why write detective novels? Because I enjoy reading them and I love to create entertaining stories. Why set them in that place and time? Because overnight the Blitz turned everyday existence into a life-and-death struggle for ordinary people – and some of them were my family.

Reviews

[Darcy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one was just really not for me. I couldn't get into it and didn't find the characters to be very interesting. The writing was fine, I was just really bored.

[Jonathan Orme · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not great. I didn’t really connect with any of the characters, it all felt a bit flat.

[Kerrie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This series began with the beginning of the Blitz in London at the beginning of September 1940, and here we are in the last book in the series, the 8th, at Christmas nearly 4 months later.

All the cases have been murder mysteries, cases that could have been attributed to the Blitz, except, as in most of the cases, for the obvious presence of a murder weapon. We have learnt little snippets of what it was like to be in London in the Blitz, also little bits about the legacy of World War One, and what was done by the authorities to try to keep life in London "normal" for its population.

The cases have been meticulously investigated by Detective Inspector Jago, originally of the Metropolitan Police force, but recently of Scotland Yard. His offsider/bagman has been Detective Constable Peter Cradock, plucked summarily from uniform and put into plain clothes. We have met a range of regular characters, including Dorothy, an American correspondent for the Boston Globe based at the Savoy Hotel.

The characters have been well developed and the plots plausible and the scenarios intersting

[Rodica · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can’t pinpoint exactly what didn’t work in this historical mystery to earn a higher rating, but at least it helped me pull me back from the reading slump looming over me. London, 1941, the police has to deal with a murder in between the chaos and disarray of bombings. There are so many elements that should make for a great read for me - historical setting, overall historical accuracy and attention to detail (characters talking and behaving as you’d expect for their time and place, details about BBC, theatre etc), but there is a lack of je-ne-sais-quoi. Is it passion? Is it more depth? Everything is adequate and that’s about it. I picked it up on a whim, trying to find something that I could read, while in a deep funk, and it also fulfilled one of the prompts in a historical mystery challenge over on StoryGraph, but I wish it would have delivered more.

[Scilla · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's almost Christmas 1940, and the blitz is going strong with bombs almost every night. Former comedian actor, Roy Radley, is found on the floor of the theater fast dying right after a bombing attack on the theater. He appears to have a screw driver in his abdomen, which tells Detective Jago that he didn't die from the German bombs. As Jago continues to interview a large number of different people. He finds out that many who worked with him or knew him were not very complimentary. He had defintely lost his acting skills and was allowed to sleep on the floor in a room in the theater because he didn't have much money and couldn't get a job. In his spare time, Jago visits an American woman reporter. A Christmas dinner is held at the end of the book, but it wasn't clear whether anyone would be hung for killing Radley.

[Michael Dunn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm now up to date with the series, having read in order.
Great setting and police procedure.
Jago is no great deductive detective, just keep interviewing people til he gets enough information.
Really weird though, that all the killer end up confessing. no one gets arrested saying they are innocent.
Enjoy the slow romance with Dorothy and Craddocks never full stomach.

[Caren · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.75 stars

[Glenda Powell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another excellent Blitz Detective story.

[Michelle Paquette · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Stephen Deans · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a great book for me. Not much story to it. Just never got going.

[Nicki Cooke · Rating 3 out of 5]

Easy read, loved the history of Covent Garden and theatre world