[electrobooks] Rennie Airth.
- From: "Shell" <shell@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <electrobooks@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 24 Apr 2009 13:42:56 +0100
This was my Latest scan, it was really good.
Shell.
River of Darkness
by
Rennie Airth.
The main protagonist of River of Darkness is a Scotland Yard detective so damaged by his
experiences during the First World War that his superiors worry
about his ability to do his job. This may sound like
Charles Todd
's excellent series about Ian Rutledge, a shell-shocked cop from the same era. But Rennie
Airth, a South African journalist who lives in Italy, has made
his hero--Inspector John Madden--a somewhat different version of one of England's walking
wounded. Madden is both gloomier (he lost his wife and young
daughter to an influenza epidemic) and more pragmatic than the poetic, indecisive
Rutledge.
Madden is sent to a town in Surrey where a local family has been massacred in what looks
like a robbery gone wrong. He finds enough echoes of his recent
battlefield experiences to conclude that the killer was just one man--most likely a former
soldier using a bayonet. As for motive, it could well be perverse
sexual passion, that "river of darkness" to which a psychologist introduces him. We meet
the killer early on, watch him as he maintains a rigid control
over every aspect of his life, then stare in horror as he periodically explodes into mad
violence. Unlike Madden, this man has not been severely damaged
or changed by the war; he has simply used it to channel and redirect his dark river.
Airth's point--that survival comes in many shapes and sizes--gives
a solid foundation to an impressive leap of imagination.
'Rennie Airth takes what at first sight seems to
be a Twenties drawing-room murder mystery and
transforms it into an edge-of-the-seat thriller set
against a skilfully evoked backdrop of war-wounded
England - compelling stuff.'
Robert Goddard
'One of the most gripping thrillers I have ever read.
The tension never lets up (I really did stay up
half the night) and it never lets go.'
Country Life
'If ever the phrase "just when you thought it was safe
to go back in the drawing-room" applied to any tale
of murder, mystery and suspense then this is that tale
-- a tale that unwinds and then suddenly twists with
the sickening lunge of the unseen knife.'
Dublin Herald
'A tense literary thriller . . . skilfully shifting
focus between the detective's search and the killer's
plot to strike again, the gifted Airth builds
suspense from elements that, with fascinating
period authenticity, give the book a feel of a
Christie or Du Maurier mystery.'
Publishers Weekly
Rennie Airth was born in South Africa and worked for
a number of years as a foreign correspondent for
Reuters. He has published two previous novels, Snatch and Once a Spy. The idea for River
of Darkness came to
him when, among some family papers, he found
mementoes of an uncle who was killed in the First
World War.
He is currently at work on a sequel to River of
Darkness.
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