Thank you to NetGalley and Allison & Busby for an e-galley of this crime novel.

It was a pleasure to read this historical crime novel, one of several by this author where a murder takes place in one of the magnificent hotels of London in the early years of World War II. This was the first novel I've read by this author and found it very pleasant to watch as he depicted the controlled chaos taking place in London as a result of the nightly air raids. The main character is Detective Inspector Edgar Saxe-Coburg, not titled himself but the brother of an Earl which circumstance opened many doors for him within government agencies in the British government. DI Coburg doesn't trade on his advantages within the English upper class, but he also doesn't hesitate to use his situation to help him solve the problem of several murder victims who have been killed in an unusual way.

The crimes kept on happening through the entire book, so the pace never became slow or laborious, but the author solved all the puzzles with no dangling threads left blowing in the wind. I've read several books about the glamorous hotels in London during this period of the early 1940s, so I already had some background to help me understand the level of opulence available to patrons at the Claridge. This is not information you need to enjoy this novel, but it did definitely make me interested in checking out what the author has already done with the Ritz and the Savoy.

A Worthy Addition…
The third in the Hotel Mysteries, historical wartime whodunnits from Jim Eldridge, this time takes the reader to Claridge’s in London. A porter at the hotel has been murdered and, with the hotel full of exiled European royalty, Detective Chief Inspector Coburg is on the case. With superb historical detail and a real sense of time and place the tale is spun with elegance and care. A worthy addition to the series which could be happily read as a standalone.

Jim Eldridge and his aristocratic Detective Chief Inspector Edgar Saxe-Coburg are working their way around the best hotels in 1940s London, investigating murder We have had The Ritz, The Savoy, and now Claridges. Setting a murder against a grand backdrop is a simple but agreeable formula which Eldridge has employed in his ‘museum series’, which are set in late Victorian England. The action takes place in October 1940, with Londoners under the hammer from Hitler’s bombers each and every night.

The concept which underpins the plot is similar to the one used in Murder at The Ritz. In the late 1930s, there were still countries in Europe ruled by what we might dismiss as ‘minor monarchies’. Albania, Yugoslavia and Romania all had ruling families, and some of them decamped to London, along with their coffers of gold. Also in London, which adds spice to the plot, were less fortunate people, some of them with a political agenda. One such, a Romanian kitchen hand at Claridges, is found garotted outside on the pavement. Saxe-Coburg’s boss calls hands him the murder investigation. The reason he wants Edgar on the case is touchingly naive. He thinks that when peace returns, and the ruling families of the Balkans resume their thrones, they will remember fondly the discretion and tact used by an English detective. The garotter then finds another victim, but what possible connection does a young woman working for the Free French headquarters in London have the unfortunate Romanian?

Lurking in the background of this tale is a man who is less than noble, but with more power than all the kings and queens sheltering in London’s best hotel suites. Henry ‘Hooky’ Morton is a London gangster who is building his empire on black market scams, the most profitable of which is his manipulation of the petrol market. We think of fuel supply – or lack of it – as a very modern problem, but in 1940, having fuel to put in your car was crucial to many organisations. Hooky Morton has a problem, though. Someone has infiltrated his gang, and is making him look stupid. Then, Hooky does something really, really stupid and, no nearer identifying the garotte killer or their motives, Saxe-Coburg becomes involved in investigating what is, for any copper, the worst crime of all.

Saxe-Coburg’s wife Rosa, a popular pianist and singer does her bit for morale in concert halls and hotels in the evening, but her day job is more exacting and brings her face to face with the havoc raining down on London from the sky – she drives an ambulance. Her assistant is killed when a bombed building collapses on him, and a little while later, when Rosa goes to visit his widow. she is horrified to find the woman dead on the kitchen floor, killed with the same method used to despatch the Romanian kitchen hand and the young Frenchwoman.

I suppose Murder at Claridges is, if genres mean anything, on the fringe of cosy crime, but is a genuine page-turner. Despite the grimly authentic background of London being battered by the Luftwaffe, it gives us larger-than-life characters and, of course, it allows us to peep into a world which only the truly rich inhabit. The suave Saxe-Coburg is a timely antidote to the damaged, troubled and – frankly – disturbing world of so many fictional Detective Inspectors who inhabit our contemporary world. Eldridge is a fine writer and never has escapism been so elegantly penned. This book is published by Allison & Busby, and will be out in Kindle and hardback on 21st April, with a paperback edition due in the autumn.

This murder mystery set in London in the early days of the second world war has a certain resonance with the horrible events unfolding in Ukraine today, as it describes the horror of war from the point of view of civilians accidentally caught up in it. The war is quintessential to the plot, and fans of wartime history will find a lot of fascinating historical details form part of the story. Despite this, the novel is an easy read. The civilians are not all equally affected by the war. Some are victims and some are villains. Discerning which is which and how they are all interconnected is the task of the aristocratic detective at the heart of the story.

This book had me stumped. Sitting smug and thinking I had it all thought out, the author put me in my place. Finally we have a thriller that will keep you your toes. I truly enjoyed myself and will be recommending it to anyone I see for the next few months.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Just can’t get through this. The writing is very stilted, there are too many subplots, and the characters are uninteresting

Murder at Claridge’s is the latest book in the enjoyable Hotels series by Jim Eldridge and it is the best yet!

The various storylines are interwoven throughout with all the main characters having a chance in the limelight without distracting from the main crime.

The book moves along at a very good pace and keeps the pages turning

Definitely recommended.