I love mysteries! I once named a dog after Lord Peter Wimsey and a pet
canary after Brother Cadfael. And now I’ve discovered a new detective
series that I’ve been enjoying very much. John Jago is the Blitz
detective, a 42 –year-old bachelor who fought in the great war and now
fights crime at home in London during WWII.
Direct Hit and
Fifth Column
are the first two titles in the series.
In each novel, the author Mike Hollow creates a believable community
trimmed with all the accurate historic details such as bomb shelters and
children being evacuated to the countryside and women carrying gas masks
to the corner grocery store when they go shopping. For fans of the PBS
series
Foyle’s War, here’s something you’ll enjoy sinking your teeth into.
Detective Jago must solve murders and other crimes, tasks frequently
complicated when German bombs obliterate all evidence or seemingly
respectable witnesses turn out to be traitors and spies. I am eagerly
looking forward to the release of the next novel in the series,
Enemy
Action, in which Jago must solve the puzzle of a pacifist school teacher
found stabbed to death in a public air raid shelter—a task complicated by
the fact that the teacher owned a gun.
When asked why he set his detective novels in London during the Blitz,
Hollow responded, “the Blitz turned everyday existences into a
life-and-death struggle for ordinary people—and some of them were my
family.”
The novels are published by Lion Fiction, an imprint of Lion Hudson, a
company offering Christian fiction of a different sort, “aiming
to reach both religious and secular readers by relying on narrative
thrust, believable characters, and boundary-crossing context to create an
imaginative awareness of spiritual truths without battering-ram
preachment.”
Happy reading!
An award-winning writer and frequent conference speaker, Shirley Raye Redmond is the author of three inspirational novels, PRUDENCE PURSUED, VIPER’S NEST, and AMANDA’S BEAU, as well as two dozen children’s books, including LEWIS & CLARK: A PRAIRIE DOG FOR THE PRESIDENT (Random House), which was a Children’s Book of the Month Club selection. Shirley Raye holds an M.A. in literature and teaches through the Institute of Children’s Literature. She has been married to her husband Bill for over forty years. They live in New Mexico and are blessed with two grown children and three adorable grandchildren. Touch bases at shirleyrayeredmond.com or Facebook.
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