It's truly a shame that Siân Busby passed away last year at the very young age of 42 leaving behind only a handful of books and her last one unfinished. At the time of her death she was completing A Commonplace Killing. The manuscript was handwritten and the final section remained unedited. To the average reader the story flows steadily and had there not been a note on page 250 noting that the ending was simply transcribed from her notebooks, it wouldn't have been jarringly obvious that the last bit was unembellished. In any case I couldn't detect a change in style between what came before and what came after. Her husband, who wrote the introduction to the book, calls her writing stark at the end though fitting for the subject matter.
A Commonplace Killing was inspired by an actual crime that occurred after WWII during Britain's period of Austerity, and Busby captures perfectly the the weariness of London's denizens still living with shortages of life's everyday necessities, the food rationing, the disappointments that even after a victorious war that little seems to have changed. People live in bombed out buildings, husbands return home to wives who didn't lead faultless existences while they were gone, and wives are stuck in unhappy situations with the men they thought they would love always but now are so very different than when they left. The story exudes an atmosphere that is pitch perfect and clever in the telling.
It's a shame that DDI (Divisional Detective Inspector) Jim Cooper will only ever solve one crime for the reader. A veteran of the First World War, alone after his wife left him for another man at the start of this new war (surely he understands that this other man is off to battle and may never return), he is as weary as the rest but with all the potential and hope that maybe there is happiness in his future. When a group of schoolboys discovers the body of a woman in the ruins of a bombed building, Cooper is called in to investigate.
His superiors of course are pressing for a quick result, and he knows he must act quickly before the trail turns cold, but really how much time should be spent on such a "commonplace killing". This is only the death, murder or not, of a woman who may have been a prostitute. And the perpetrators of sex crimes like this are rarely caught. Women like this, a dime a dozen during the war, don't warrant so much attention, though the young woman assigned to drive Cooper about laments the fact that a woman strangled, tart or not, should ever be considered commonplace.
What muddies the waters of this crime is the fact that the victim obviously has taken care of herself, older but fastidious and nicely dressed. Why would a woman who must have had consensual sex since there is no sign of struggle or rape, have been murdered? And why would a woman who to all appearances is respectably middle class have consented to go off to a bomb site for a tryst? There is nothing "austerity" about this woman. She looks as if she is one who had a "lovely war."
What emerges is a story that must have been a common one during and after the war. It's told through parallel "voices". Lillian Frobisher, wife and mother, is stuck in an unhappy marriage taking care of an invalid mother, a husband who she wishes would not have come back to her after the war, and a grown son who no longer needs her. Her life is not as she planned and hoped. She's desperately unhappy and it's not unheard of that she might look for a little fun and adventure outside the home--just as she and so many other women did during the war.
As the story unfolds the reader see's the set up to the crime, the building of tension as Lillian makes her way through yet another day filled with anxiety and thankless tasks, living in a bomb-damaged house that is not really fit for occupancy. Interleaved between scenes is DDI Cooper's investigation of this murdered woman, at first unidentified. His own unhappiness of being alone, his desire for policewoman Tring is as palpable as Lillian's own frustrations--the two not really so very different in a way. The ending is not so surprising, yet wholly satisfying. Anything more would really have felt out of place in this story--commonplace in so many ways.
Yes, it's a shame Siân Busby won't be writing another DDI Cooper mystery. I wouldn't mind at all getting to know him better and learn whether he finds his own happiness in life. Then again maybe Busby would have moved on to new and different material. Her other books are all so very different. It's a testament to her storytelling abilities and a sign of just how much I liked this book that I ordered two others by her that I think wouldn't otherwise have gotten a second glance, McNaughten and The Cruel Mother: A Memoir, both of which have some basis in actual events (the latter having been inspired by her great-grandmother's life as a matter of fact). I'll definitely be reading more of her work.