Rennie airth biography of martin
River of Darkness
- By: Rennie Airth
- Narrated by: Christopher Kay
- Length: 13 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
Overall
Performance
Story
In 1921, the bloodied bodies of Colonel Fletcher, his wife and two staff are found in a manor house in Surrey....
- 5 out of 5 stars
New Mystery Written in 1920's Style-What A Thrill!
- By Nancy J on 06-27-12
Summary
Beloved church organist Greta Hartmann has fallen to her death in a shallow creek, and while investigations conclude it to be an accident, some aren't convinced. After learning that Greta was the widow of a prominent anti-Nazi German preacher, former chief inspector Angus Sinclair resolves to dig deeper into the story. His investigations lead him to the manor of Julia Lesage, an electrifying spirit adored by many. Among them is a gentleman with dubious business dealings who is also staying at the house. A blizzard hits, keeping Sinclair, and later Madden, on the grounds with little to do but analyse the case of Greta's death.
Author Notes
Rennie Airth was born in South Africa and worked as a foreign correspondent for Reuters news service for many years. The first novel in his John Madden mystery series, River of Darkness , won the Grand Prix de Litterature Polici re for best international crime novel of 2000 and was nominated for Edgar, Anthony, and Macavity awards.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Set in post-WWII England, Airth's outstanding sixth John Madden mystery (after 2017's The Death of Kings) takes retired Scotland Yard chief inspector Angus Sinclair, a series regular, to Hampshire to visit friends. From his host, Sinclair learns that Greta Hartmann, the local church's German organist, drowned in a stream after slipping and hitting her head on a rock. The official verdict of accident is challenged by Greta's housemate, Vera Cruickshank, who refuses to believe that her close friend, who always forded the stream with great care, just slipped. Vera's argument impresses Sinclair, and his suspicions of foul play are strengthened when he learns that Greta was unsettled after a chance encounter with a man whose car had broken down. Given Greta's nationality, Sinclair considers the possibility that she recognized a Nazi war criminal, who subsequently killed her to keep her quiet. The suspense heightens once Madden, a shell-shocked WWI veteran, get
River of Darkness
by Rennie Airth
Published by Viking Press
400 pages, 1999
Search the Dark
by Charles Todd
Published by St. Martin's Press
336 pages, 1999
The War Back Home
Reviewed by J. Kingston Pierce
Eight decades after the close of World War I, the significance of that conflict has been diminished in relation to later international clashes. The image of "doughboys" in their broad-brimmed helmets huffing across no-man's-lands strewn with barbed wire and awash in mustard gas now seems almost quaint, hardly connected with our high-tech, high-caliber era.
"The Great War," as its combatants called it, may have been one of the biggest events of the early 20th century, but it fails to dominate our memories in the same way that World War II and the Vietnam War do. This is especially true in the United States, which entered World War I late and lost "only" 114,000 servicemen in its battles -- fewer than half the number of Americans who perished during World War II.
Yet World War I proved devastating for the British. Both militarily and psychologically. In July 1917, at the Battle of Ypres (better known as the Battle of Passchendaele, after the Belgian town where it was fought), 70,000 British soldiers died and another 170,000 were wounded. This was a crushing blow, especially when lumped atop the disastrous Battle of the Somme, fought in France just a year before. With its 420,000 British casualties (60,000 on the very first day of fighting), the Somme marked "the end of an age of vital optimism in British life that has never been recovered," writes historian John Keegan in The First World War.
For many British soldiers, even the war's end and their return to civilian life did not bring them peace. Like those featured in a pair of enthralling new
Now, if you know a Star Warsfan or are one yourself, this is not necessarily a radical idea regarding film, but it's not something I've heard stated often about books (at least in part because good books rarely have a sequel and almost never have two of them). The argument in favor of The Empire Strikes Backis that it offers the richest character study, broadens the moral and spiritual parameters of its universe and increases the stakes for everyone. What's interesting about the Airth books, though, is that despite all of them featuring the same characters going over virtually the same plot for the same stakes, the second book tries the leastto convince you of how grave they are and, in that process, creates a richer story for those same characters.
Of course, immediately after thinking of writing this down, I thought about a response I'd received to another piece I'd written about historical detective fiction. Midway through last year, I got in an argument on a message board with a guy who's read this site off and on. I suggested that a book he liked didn't really count as "literature," to which he replied (I'm paraphrasing), "What the hell would you know about it? All you do is review mystery novels." Ouch.
In spite of having reviewed history, public policyand literary fictionbooks before, I had to concede at least a centimeter of truth. (However, I later saw a picture of the guy, and evidently he has a 1:5 ratio of truth to eyebrows. It's like Joe Flacc