Hardcastle's Quandary

September 9, 2013
Ison throws his readers more than a few curveballs in the 11th mystery featuring irascible Divisional Det. Insp. Ernest Hardcastle, of the Metropolitan Police (after 2012’s Hardcastle’s Frustration). On New Year’s Eve 1915, the DDI’s plans for celebrating are disrupted by the murder of jeweler and pawnbroker Reuben Gosling. A witness reports seeing two men speed off in a motorcar, but when the police locate the vehicle’s owner, wealthy Sinclair Villiers, he plausibly denies any involvement. Routine police work leads to the discovery that Sinclair’s army captain son, Haydn, who often borrows the car, spent the night of the crime with his colonel’s wife. Hardcastle, theorizing that an enemy of Haydn’s was trying to frame him, looks into an espionage angle, only to find British intelligence intervening in the case. Ison does little to distinguish Hardcastle from countless other gruff series leads, but he does offer readers a genuinely unusual secret at the heart of the mystery.

October 15, 2013
Divisional DI Ernest Hardcastle (Hardcastle's Frustration, 2012, etc.) ushers in 1916 with whiskey, brown ale and murder. No sooner does the Hardcastle family finish its New Year's Eve toast than a knock at the door brings a sergeant from the Kennington Road police station with an urgent summons. A jeweler's in Vauxhall Bridge Road has been robbed and its owner, Reuben Gosling, killed. Hardcastle wakes neighbor Sidney Partridge, who reports seeing a car with "one of those canvas things" and "them white tyres." The detective soon discovers that a Haxe-Doulton convertible with whitewall tires went missing the night of Gosling's murder. Its owner, Sinclair Villiers, is a posh gent with a snooty butler named Henwood. Servant and master alibi each other nicely. But Villiers's son, Haydn, has a bad habit of borrowing dad's car without notice. Although Villiers Jr. is supposed to be fighting in France, Villiers Sr.'s estranged wife, Hannah, admits that her son is home. What she doesn't say, but what a bit of tailing reveals, is that he's in London to bed his colonel's wife. Worse than cuckolding his commander, young Capt. Villiers seems also to be receiving Morse-code messages from France about British troop movements, messages to be bartered to the Turks as part of a Zionist plot to establish a homeland in Palestine. There aren't too many dots between the jeweler's death and the Jewish state, and Hardcastle connects them with more speed than logic. Perhaps the glossary Ison gives to explain terms like "boozer" and "nick" should have included an entry for "mishegas."

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September 15, 2013
Another top-notch entry in this well-regarded British police-procedural series set during WWI, this latest adventure has the irascible DDI Hardcastle faced with two murders. Jeweler Reuben Gosling has been beaten to death, with robbery appearing to be the motive, but something doesn't smell right to Hardcastle. He's hardly begun the investigation when another murder takes place: this time, a man named Peter Stein is shot to death in his flat. Are the cases related? The most promising clue is the car Gosling's killer used to flee the scene. The car's owner is the extremely wealthy Sinclair Villiers, whose son, Haydn, is an officer serving in France. As Hardcastle investigates, he soon has a wealth of cluesa Morse code machine, an illicit love affair, a group of Jewish activists, a deserting officer, and a bizarre rendezvous with a Swedish ship. But when Special Branch and MI5 get involved, Hardcastle knows this is no ordinary case. As usual, Ison offers full-bodied characters, entertaining badinage between Hardcastle and his long-suffering sergeant, a byzantine plot to keep readers off balance, and plenty of authentic period ambience.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)

March 1, 2019
Ison's Hardcastle series takes readers back to a between-the-wars Britain, where the telephone is the newest form of technology, well-defined social mores and behaviorial expectations are firmly in place, and policing relies solely on plodding footwork. Nonetheless, crimes must still be solved, and DDI Ernie Hardcastle and his loyal sidekick, Charles Marriott, are always ready to face the challenge. The latest outing for the duo comes when a fire in a small garage an hour from London turns out to be arson. Murder is also on the menu, after Hardcastle finds body parts in the smoldering remains of the fire. One of the garage's owners is a victim, but there are two bodies, and the second is female. Who was she, and could the dead man's business partner have killed both victims? If so, why? Hardcastle and Marriott's search for answers takes them from a small-town parsonage to a village butcher shop to London's seedy nightclubs and Holloway Prison. The conclusion to the complex case is as tragic as it is surprising. Another strong entry in a consistently fine series.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)