A Commonplace Killing by Sian Busby (Short Books)
by Patrick O'Connor
IN a moving forward to this marvellous novel, the BBC's economic editor Robert Peston pays tribute to his wife Sian Busby who died shortly before it was published.
Peston transcribed the final pages of her manuscript from a notebook he found after her death so that the book could be completed and anyone who reads it will be eternally grateful.
The setting is London in July 1946 and the plot involves what, on the face of it, appears to be a run-of the mill sex murder of a prostitute, that nobody really cares about.
But Detective Inspector Jim Cooper, usually bogged down with sorting out small-time black marketeers, crooks and spivs, does care.
Cooper instinctively feels that this is more than a 'commonplace killing' and aided by his attractive driver Policewoman Tring, sets about finding the killer in a logical, painstakingly methodical way.
But this is no ordinary crime whodunnit. Busby's great skill is in capturing what it was like living – and surviving – in a grim, grey, blitz-battered, ration-blighted London in the immediate aftermath of the war. The food they ate, the clothes they wore, are all vividly portrayed to paint a picture which will delight those who really like to immerse themselves in another time, another era.
The conflict has left its scars of many people, not only those who fought abroad but also those left behind and this has a dramatic impact on all the central characters.
As well as using Cooper as a protagonist, Busby also takes us into world of the murdered woman who doesn't turn out as we first expected.