Hardcastle's Soldiers

February 15, 2010
Its 1914, and the Great War is up and running. Food rationing, blackouts, air raids, and the deaths of thousands of soldiers are hitting the usually stiff-upper-lipped British particularly hard. But crime doesnt stop, even with a war on, and DDI Ernest Hardcastle and his long-suffering sidekick, DS Charles Marriott, must solve the murder of a cashier at Victoria railway station. Left at the crime scene are an army-issue revolver and cap, but the owner of the cap claims it was stolen and the revoler isnt his, leaving Hardcastle and Marriott faced with doing the slogging police work theyd hoped to avoid. The Hardcastle novels are consistently well constructed, thoroughly researched, and historically accurate, and this one is no exception. But readers beware: the period idiom and rhyming cockney slang are a struggle to interpret, even with the aid of the glossary at the end of the book.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)