Forests of the Night (Johnny Hawke, Book 1)
Noted Sherlock Holmes expert Davies (Veiled Detective) launches a new series with this competent, if unspectacular whodunit set in WWII London and featuring Johnny Hawke, who has just started a new career as a PI after a misfiring gun cost him his left eye and a career in the army. His caseload is fairly run-of-the-mill until Eric and Freda Palfrey enlist him to trace their missing 27-year-old daughter, Pamela. Hawke soon finds that the plain, middle-class girl had been living a double life, and that her secret role as a high-class prostitute has led to her death, probably at the hands of one of her clients, one of whom is a prominent film star. With its decent atmospherics, this novel compares favorably to John Gardner's WWII Suzie Mountford series (Troubled Midnight, etc.), but Davies's workmanlike prose doesn't match that of Charles Todd's Ian Rutledge series or Jacqueline Winspear's Maisie Dobbs mysteries.(Jan.)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.