Review: An Air That Kills

An Air That Kills by Andrew Taylor
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three and a half stars.

Intriguing start to a new series (to me) by a favourite author set in the 1950s.

This book follows several different characters and at first it is difficult to see where the story is going or how they are connected, but it all comes together well at the end.

DI Thornhill and his family have transferred to the small market town of Lydmouth from Cambridgeshire. His first task is to investigate a series of local burglaries which the local coppers suspect is the work of a local ne'er-do-well Charlie Meakin who has recently returned to Lydmouth to stay with his mother from London where he consorted with notorious crime boss James 'Genghis' Carn who coincidentally has just been released from prison.

Jill Francis is a London journalist, she has left London in a hurry to stay with an old friend, Philip, and his wife Charlotte. Jill has been ill and this is something of a convalescence. On the train down from London she shares a carriage with a strange little man who gives her the creeps.

Workmen are clearing some derelict buildings from the grounds of an old pub, long-since fallen into disrepair, when they find a small box which contains what look like human remains, baby bones, a silver brooch and a scrap from a local newspaper - one which Charlotte coincidentally owns. Charlie happens to be one of the workmen who discover the remains.

Now with a potential murder to investigate as well, DI Thornhill turns to local historian Major Harcutt for the history of the buildings in which the bones were found. Major Harcutt suggests the bones may be related to a local notorious loose woman in the 1890s who murdered her twin children in order to run away with her Italian lover, the Major hypothesises that she had this before and the bones were the remains of an earlier child. Major Harcutt is the latest victim of the robberies and ends up hospitalised as a result. In her self-appointed role as lady bountiful, Charlotte decides that Major Harcutt's daughter Antonia must return to Lydmouth to nurse him.

How all these people come together, their interactions with each other and the identity of the baby's bones proves to be an interesting read. Although as others have said, the 1950s seems like a particularly bleak period of time in rural England.

Read on my Kindle Unlimited subscription.

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