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Allison & Busby, This edition first published: January,
2007
Reviewed by Sunnie Gill
It’s 1944 and England is at war. People are having to make sacrifices and
face hardship, with just about everything rationed. However, there are
opportunities, and Suzie Mountford has made the most of one that would not
have presented itself had there not been a war. Because there are so many
men away at the war, women are allowed to join the police force. Suzie has
reached the rank of WDS (Woman Detective Sergeant). She works with her
boss, Detective Chief Superintendent Tommy Livermore, who is also her
lover.
The tortured bodies of an officer in the Glider Regiment and the wife of
another officer are found in circumstances which suggest they have been
having an affair. Tommy and Suzie are called in to investigate. Things
become complicated when a former schoolmate of Tommy’s turns up. Curry
Shepherd is now a member of the intelligence service and he believes there
is something sinister behind these deaths.
The officer is a member of a planning committee for a very hush-hush plan
to invade France: Operation Overlord. Curry believes that the officer was
tortured and murdered in an attempt to extract information from him. He
also believes that there is a spy in their midst. Much to Tommy’s chagrin,
Curry organises for Suzie to be seconded to the Intelligence Service to
assist him. While Tommy is unhappy about this, Suzie isn’t. Things have
been rocky between and Tommy lately and Suzie finds herself very attracted
to the handsome Curry.
In the author’s note at the beginning of the book, John Gardner readily
admits that the plot is one that has been tackled by a number of authors
before him. And therein lies part of the problem I had with TROUBLED
MIDNIGHT. It has been done before and the author brought nothing new to
the concept. The plot is somewhat flimsy. Much of the book is taken up
with the relationships between Curry, Tommy and Suzy; mostly in the form
of them sniping at one another because of the sexual tensions.
It is clear that the author is very knowledgeable about the time period.
However, the means of imparting it feels clunky and doesn’t fit seamlessly
into the plot. At times it felt as if the reader was just being given
information because the author knew it. For instance, one character used
slang which necessitated the author explaining where that slang came from,
the name of the radio show that coined it and a little about that radio
show itself. It was just too much extraneous information.
The author, John Gardner, is by no means a new hand at writing. He has a
number of series to his credit. In fact, he was approached by the estate
of Ian Fleming to write a number of 007 novels after Fleming’s death. The
author’s forte is spy and espionage novels and perhaps he is at his best
staying within that genre. TROUBLED MIDNIGHT was a disappointingly
lacklustre novel.
TROUBLED MIDNIGHT is the fourth in the Suzie Mountford series.
Feb 2007 review originally published on Murder & Mayhem
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