Corpus by Rory Clements, Book Review

Not often do you come across crime books set in 1936, in Britain. Those of us who remember the pre-war years, don’t talk about it, and the rest don’t understand the turmoil, even here in the UK. Our schools teach what happened in Germany and thus we feel smug about the naivete and nastiness of the Germans to fall for Nazism, thinking it could never happen to us. However, we too had fascists and Nazi sympathisers in our midst, in fact at the very heart of the establishment. 1936, a year of political turmoil, exacerbated by the scandal of King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson, makes a stunning period for this dashing thriller. 

Few would associate the murder of members of the sleepy ‘squirarchy’ and the unexplained death of a young woman with political intrigue at the highest level. We might suspect a communist and a German diplomat of shady dealings, a journalist at a push, but hardly two young English girls who met at school, even if one of them is a drug addict. 

The main protagonist and sleuth, for lack of a better word, is Professor Wilde, an American historian at Oxford University.  He must not only unravel the mystery behind these killings, but save the woman he has fallen in love with and prevent a terrible slaughter. A stimulating and thought-provoking read.

The author, Rory Clements, a former journalist, is the winner of the 2010 CWA Ellis Peters Historical Award and a TV series of his John Shakespeare novels is currently in development. 

Corpus was first published by Zaffre in 2017.