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Ebook291 pages4 hours
A Commonplace Killing
By Siân Busby
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
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About this ebook
On a damp July morning in 1946, two schoolboys find a woman's body in a bomb site in north London. The woman is identified as Lillian Frobisher, a wife and mother who lived in a war-damaged terrace a few streets away. The police assume that Lil must have been the victim of a vicious sexual assault; but the autopsy finds no evidence of rape, and Divisional Detective Inspector Jim Cooper turns his attention to her private life. How did Lil come to be in the bomb site - a well-known lovers' haunt? If she had consensual sex, why was she strangled? Why was her husband seemingly unaware that she had failed to come home on the night she was killed? In this gripping murder story, Siân Busby gradually peels away the veneer of stoicism and respectability to reveal the dark truths at the heart of postwar austerity Britain.
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Author
Siân Busby
Siân Busby, an award-winning writer, broadcaster, and filmmaker, was married to the BBC Business Editor Robert Peston and the mother of two sons. Author of the highly acclaimed historical novel McNaughten, she died in 2012.
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Reviews for A Commonplace Killing
Rating: 3.369562608695652 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
23 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Jumping in and out of POV was jarring. It made me think of "The Bletchley Circle," which was much better.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This book is being marketed as a crime novel. And although the story is told from the viewpoint of the victim, and a lonely police detective who is assigned to the case, the crime takes a back seat to the story of daily life in post-war England.
Conditions are harsh. Crime is rampant. The war may be over, but it doesn't feel that way to the people living there. Necessities are in very short supply and most luxuries only available through the blackmarket.
People line up for hours just for a loaf of stale bread or a head of lettuce. The victim dreams of romance and little luxuries such as Pond's cold cream, black stockings and tinned peaches.
The policeman also dreams of romance and a regular meal, the kind available before the war, instead of having to make do with stale bread sandwiches.
People are just making do, living in squalid conditions. Their homes were partially destroyed by bombs but they cannot move because they have no where else to go. Everyone is wishing that life could go back to the way it was, before the war.
An illuminating picture of life in post-war England. Definitely recommended.