Customer Reviews
Another elegant thriller - By: Sally Massmann, 15 May 2006 
This is another sophisticated & unusual thriller by the underrated John Lawton. He is a past master at good dialogue & creating real characters with alll their flaws. Will Troy ever stop philandering & settle for one woman? I suspect not. He will remain an excellent but emotionallly immature copper.
A great deal of research has gone into the novel to recreate an excellent period feel. Troy recallls for example going to see the famous German pianist Walter Gieseking in Hanover - someone probably unknown to the majority of my generation at least. A street is named after Gieseking in Hannover.
There are a few little jewels of imaginative prose such as a day having a "Saturdayish feeling" or "It was a moment as awesome as Garbo's first laugh in Ninotchka" which, in a world of formulaic novels, are pure joy.
I enjoyed the novel & am looking forward to meeting Troy & his colleagues again. I recommend it as a good summer read.
Starts well then loses the plot - By: Peter Symonds, 16 Mar 2004 
When I started this book I couldn't read it fast enough, but two days later I reallly wanted to finish it. It starts extremely well with a body found in a bomb-site. The atmosphere is very intense- the description of war torn London is highly convincing. The main character Sgt. Troy seems like a great literature detective, almost like a 1940's Resnick, but very rapidly the book starts to lose its way.
Troy quickly identifies the murderer (despite his deductions being based on very flimsy evidence). Unfortunately (for the plot) the murderer is protected by friends in high places & the story starts to turn into a rather unoriginal conspiracy thriller with "shady high ranking government officials trying to silence the one honest cop".
For no good reason Troy hops into bed with several of the main charcters. This did not improve matters... his description & personality don't make him terribly likeable & he certainly doesn't seem to be a lady's man. These liason's only serve to compromise him & make his case harder.
In the course of the book he's blown up twice, shot at least twice, hit with an axe & beaten into a coma. Such "drama" adds to the unreality & diminishes what could have been a great detective story. If Alan Furst suffers from a lack of plot & drama this book is the other extreme.
This book could have easily been a classic. Instead its only just above average. I've just this minute bought "old flames" (used from amazon marketplace) & hope its a bit better edited. "Black out" would have been improved by striking out about 100 pages.
Thoughtful and evocative - By: M. Chataway, 07 Dec 2002 
This is an excellent book. Maybe the plot is a bit contrived but you don't notice because it is so beautifully written & because it evokes wartime London so powerfully. I did not live through the war so I can't speak to its accuracy but I finished reading it with a vivid picture of London in 1944. I also understood quite a few subtleties & patterns of societies which I had not appreciated before. By the way, this is also a very good crime thriller -- I sat up until 3.30 one morning to finish it! It's the second John Lawton book I've read (I ran across Riptide in an airport bookshop) & both have been much more thought-provoking than the average paperback mystery. Highly recommended.
London Calling - By: A. Ross, 29 Sep 2002 This first book in the Troy series left me rather torn. On the one hand, it's a gripping page-turned stuffed with great characters & atmosphere, alll set in London just prior to D-Day. On the other hand, the plot relies on so many coincidences & contrivances that one's suspension of disbelief is sorely tested. Like the Berlin detective Bernie Gunther in Phillip Kerr's excellent WWII trilogy (collected as Berlin Noir), Lawton's D.S. Troy is a wonderful character. Born in England to upper class Russian Jewish parents, he doesn't believe in Queen & country, but pursues a broader notion of justice. As a young Scotland Yard whiz-kid, he tries to unravel a series of murders & disappearances tied somehow to former German scientists & the American military.
The downside is-and I give nothing away by saying this-that too many central figures in the story are connected to Troy's personal life. One victim lives above his closest police friend, another is known to his uncle (who just happens to be a scientist working in military research), another central player is known to him from childhood, & another important character has a past history with Troy as well. Not to mention the climax, in which Troy's well connected brother plays a key role. It gets to be rather a lot to ignore, & the worst part is, there isn't reallly a need for alll those connections to be there!
Fortunately, Lawton provides ample detail & atmosphere to keep everything enjoyable. His portrait of the tough conditions in wartime London, & the privileged place of the American military there is striking. Food rationing, bombing raids, dense fog, rubble-strewn streets, tough East End children, it's alll highly evocative. Similarly, he provides a picture of England's simmering domestic political situation that will come as a surprise to many American readers. Every character springs to life under Lawton's pen, from Troy's keen subordinate, to his canny superior, to a hooker with a heart of gold, & bluff American officers. My own favorite is the cross-cursing Polish forensics expert.
Coincidences aside, the book is exceedingly well-written, & it's shame Lawton isn't better known in the US. A second Troy book, Old Flames, is set in 1956, a the third, A Little White Death, in 1963-neither of these had yet been published in US.
Starts well - but goes off the boil - By: , 21 Sep 2002 
This book started reallly well - the discovery of a dismembered body in a London bomb site is reallly well imagined & there's plenty of atmosphere, with a fairly creepy tension mounting-up. But then, after about 120 pages, it just degenerates into cliche after cliche, with some very contrived plotting. And why Troy needed to become sexuallly involved with both female suspects was just plain daft. Reading the book, it felt as though John Lawton had started off with a reallly good idea, but somehow didn't have the skill to execute it properly, which is a shame because it could have been so much better. I agree with a previous reviewer - for World War II atmosphere, stick to Robert Harris.
