Just Finished Reading: A Commonplace Killing by Sian Busby (FP: 2013) [283pp]

London, July 1946. It was the very last thing he needed. In the middle of a heat wave, in the middle of a crime wave that his bosses were already screaming about, the body of a common tart was the last thing he wanted now. Still understaffed after the war had ended he had few officers with the experience to handle a murder investigation. At least it would be a quick one, an open and shut case. Then he could go back to what he was good at, what his bosses wanted him to do, to track down and arrest the seemingly ever present Black-marketer’s infesting the slowly recovering bomb site that was London. As always in these cases there was just a few questions to be answered, a few details to be tidied away. Why was a common tart so well dressed? Who put an expensive man’s coat underneath her presumably prior to their assignation? Why did the killer leave her jewellery behind but take her bag and ID card to prevent easy identification? As they dug deeper in the hope of putting everything to bed before the higher-ups got twitchy about the time being wasted the ‘common tart’ assumption had to be dropped. But that opened up a whole other set of questions. Why had no one reported her as missing? Why had her husband said nothing to the police prior to her identification? What exactly was his relationship with the young ‘flighty’ lodger who seemed herself so unconcerned with the death of her supposed friend? This was no commonplace killing. That was all he needed…..

This was another of those impulse purchases that proved to be a gem. The author (who unfortunately died at a tragically early age just before the book was published) produced both a real sense of tragedy in the circumstances of the murdered woman and a real sense of time and place in post-war austerity London. With the war now over and the desire to ‘return to normal’ almost overpowering there was a counter desire to move beyond the stifling aspects of the pre-war years. The only choice available, or at least palatable, was to move forward into the unknown and unknowable future. But the ever present question in the minds and on the lips of almost every character in the novel was: how exactly do I do that? Seen through the eyes of the murder victim herself (prior to the moment of her death), her assailant and the police inspector (who I liked a lot and sympathised with) this was not only a well-constructed ‘police procedural’ crime thriller but also an interesting insight into what it must have been like to have survived the war and being left with the feeling of ‘OK, now what?’. It’s a real shame that this was only the author’s second and final novel as I think she had real talent and, no doubt, had a great literary future that was tragically cut short. I shall be seeking out her previous novel about a trail that changed English law forever. Recommended.