A mix between Jack Reacher and a classy Englishman, John Madden is an interesting detective with some dark history. A well written crime novel, similar to a good English crime drama broadcasted on the BBC. A good amount of twists and turns to keep you in suspense, and decent depth in the main characters. Worth a read, will be looking out for the next novel in this series.

So disappointing. The mystery was just so-so and character development frankly sucked. I'm sorry, but a female doctor in the 1920's would not be so far in lust as to jump the nearest man, no matter how good looking she thinks he is, especially one she knows next to nothing about. If she was that smart and in control of herself, she would never have taken the chance of becoming pregnant (no birth control pill then) out of wedlock (still terribly taboo at the time) and risked her entire career that she had worked so diligently to become recognized in. Why, oh why, do people insist on putting modern sensibilities into a supposedly historical setting? Ridiculous. I am not impressed.

1

Although this is the first in the John Madden series, I first read the second book, The Blood-Dimmed Tide, and enjoyed it so much that I sought out the other novels in the series.

Airth is a fine writer--he sets scenes well, but with a minimum of fuss, his characters are well-drawn, and the story is solid. Detective Inspector Madden is haunted by the pre-WWI deaths of his family and his time in the trenches. He has a gift for (as his superior puts it), seeing "beyond" the facts--in other words, he is capable of drawing inferences that are not obvious. But he is not considered or treated as a savant; he is respected by those colleagues who appreciate good work. A reviewer (quoted on the back of the third book) describes Madden as plausibly noble, and that does capture who he is. He's not a markedly better person that his colleagues, just a good, decent person who takes his work seriously and treats those around him with respect and compassion.

One of the pleasures of this mystery is that Madden's colleagues are, for the most part, good cops and guys and they all contribute to the solution (the exception is an ambitious Chief Superintendant). Chief Inspector Angus Sinclair, who is in charge of the investigation, runs a good investigation-he trusts Madden's judgment but also respects the work performed by his other Yard subordinates and, most importantly, the village bobbies. And this latter class of police officers are also portrayed with respect; some of them (Stackpole and Booth, for example) are particularly crucial. Detective Constable Billy Styles is a rookie in the CID who makes rookie mistakes but is also interested in being a better officer. He takes criticism well, and he watches closely--this latter characteristic becomes critically important.

The killer, whose identity is revealed approximately halfway through the book, is also convincingly drawn. I did find the climax somewhat implausible, but not impossible.

According to Goodreads, I read and reviewed this in 2009, but I have no memory of doing so, and, usually, books that I've read before come back to me on a re-read. My initial review is pretty generic, so I now wonder if I reviewed the wrong book:

A well-written mystery/thriller set in post-World War I England. The author's
characterization's are well done, and the central character sympathetic and interesting.

After losing his wife and child to influenza, Inspector John Madden joined the service and lived through the horrors of WWI. He's now resumed his job with Scotland Yard and is sent to investigate the murder of an entire family in Surrey. There are items missing from the home, so it is initially judged as a robbery gone wrong, but John quickly sees through the surface and realizes the intent of the intruder was murder from the beginning. When he discovers the injuries were caused by a bayonet, they realize they may be seeking a former soldier. While investigating, the gloomy Madden meets Dr. Helen Blackwell and the two form an instant bond.

I enjoyed reading about the time period, and the procedures used to narrow suspects were brilliant. Through much of the book the main character John Madden was gloomy and depressed. Other than the fact of his being haunted by the war, not much effort was made in the way of character development. I will have to read the next book to see if this is corrected. The character of Helen Blackwell, while perfectly nice, was a bit too modern for my taste. She's definitely not a woman of her time. I enjoyed reading about Billy Styles, the young cop eager to prove himself who is recruited as Madden's assistant. Overall there is a lot to recommend this book, with only a few minor problems.

Delicious! I couldn't put this book down! It alternates between the English detective and the murderer. The setting it the English country side at the end of WWI. Although it read smoothly I did get stuck a few times trying to remember which detective/inspector/chief outranked the other. But the setting and time period are two elements that I find fascinating. Perhaps I've watched too much of Downton Abbey :)

This was a very intelligent mystery that combined Agatha Christie drawing room mystery elements with a more modern day understanding of the anatomy of a psychotic killer. A detective suffering damages from serving in WWI investigates murder in the English countryside as we see the killer stalking and plotting his next victims. Fine writing, never repetitious or boring; great suspense; and characters I will love meeting again.

"I mean, this guy was a real jerk." - Norm Macdonald (on serial killer Albert Fish)

October rings in that special time when, once a year, we seek out tales of the gruesome and macabre to thrill and captivate us. Some tales invoke the supernatural - often as metaphor for real-world material challenges - while others delve into the dark recesses of the human mind.

The grisly psychological thriller can work in great harmony with the whodunnit. Sometimes this harmony even works best when we, the reader, know from an early stage who the killer is; it's then the question of whether the heroes can discover what we already know that drives the tension.

This formula can work especially well if the mystery and the chase double as an exploration of a character's foibles, dreams, and personal relationships - as in, for instance, the Hannibal Lecter books (and we're going to mention the first of those again later on). It can also be a fun and even illuminating way to explore a different time and place.

With River of Darkness, Rennie Airth kicks off what has become, to-date, a six-book series, named for speak-softly-and-carry-a-big-stick hero-detective John Madden (no relation). Through and through, it's a fun inaugural novel. As far as being a character study, it aims to give us an eclectic blend of memorable, albeit not super-deep, heroes, rather than a singular center of gravity like Will Graham or Clarice Starling.

It's really the second way its genre can succeed - probing a particular time and place - that I liked this book best. River of Darkness accomplishes a painstaking and obviously adoring depiction of towns, and the connections between them, in the English countryside of about a century prior. This is not (just) about the pastoral nature of the setting, though, because everywhere in this book we find young men fractured - emotionally or physically - or simply dead and buried entirely, apropos of the generation-darkening Great War.

In fact, it's not a stretch to say that River of Darkness is a post-World War I character study disguised via the Trojan Horse of a serial killer whodunnit. Which is not to say that the murders and the chase are extraneous. Quite to the contrary, the vivid events of this book emerge as if inevitably from the embers of the violent and merciless Great War that were left burning, if not upon the scarred countryside itself, then in the psyche of the populace.

This is the river of darkness, but it also gives a chance for new heroes to emerge. In a captivating and effective contrast with the main villain, our hero, lonesome and reserved having lost his family years ago, stumbles into a second chance - a rebirth of life and love (christened via a steamy romance that wouldn't be out-of-place in a supermarket paperback, but wisely embeds itself alongside two characters you can't help rooting for).

And not all heroes wear capes - or badges. Switching perspective (a heavy indulgence in this book, not at all a bad thing) can be especially tense when we start learning about the serial killer's next victim-to-be. You might want to see such a character fight back, but of course they can't succeed entirely, or there'd be no threat.

In a series of passages that honestly kept me guessing until the end, River of Darkness threads this needle deftly, endearing us to characters who don't have the faintest idea how much danger they're in. The familiarity we gain across this section, the looming dread, and its bittersweet but ultimately well-earned conclusion, made for probably my favorite part of the whole book.

As for the main villain himself? I'm hard-pressed to put it better than ol' Norm. While the tropes he exhibits are pretty well-established - the weird childhood, the psychosexual twistedness, the early abuse of animals, the superhuman strength at unexpected times - the way the character was credulously rooted in the post-World War I setting was more than enough to keep things fresh for me. Mileage here, to be fair, might vary, and that's just an inherent risk of this law-of-diminishing-returns-prone genre.

My personal taste is that a well-known trope isn't a problem if it's well-executed. My only gripe is that one part of this book came close to testing the limits of that taste: a part that would be very familiar to readers of Thomas Harris's [b:Red Dragon|28877|Red Dragon (Hannibal Lecter, #1)|Thomas Harris|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1593241110l/28877._SY75_.jpg|925503], the first Hannibal Lecter book. It's a series of well-worn, but in both cases well-executed, tropes, that just happened to occur consecutively in both books. (River of Darkness was written second, by about two decades.)

Those tropes, as I mentioned, are pervasive enough that it's possible both authors rolled sixes independently of each other. And I was endeared enough to this book's characters that it didn't cross me any further than a sly "this seems vaguely familiar" grin.

All told, it's an enjoyable page-turner. I wouldn't put it quite on the same scale as Red Dragon or [b:The Alienist|40024|The Alienist (Dr. Laszlo Kreizler, #1)|Caleb Carr|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388256626l/40024._SY75_.jpg|2266643], but I found myself missing the world River of Darkness created very soon after it ended. I'll definitely be checking out more books in this series, further down the line.

Who knows what this John Madden guy will do next?

It started well, with good writing and quick-paced plot. We are introduced to the protagonists early, but the killer far too early as well. It is run of the mill with all the trimmings, a quick and easy read that is unfortunately far too long.

There is little intrigue, just things happening and going on. No one really solves anything, they just stumble upon things bit by bit. I prefer my crime novels to have scientific edges and actual detective work. Not just phoning up the police station down the road and asking if they've seen anything suspicious lately.