Bloody Winter: A Pyke Mystery
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Book Description
The troubled head of the Detective Branch returns, in an intriguing case of kidnap, rebellion and murder...
--This text refers to the
Paperback
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Product Description
A body is discovered in a ditch outside the town of Dundrum in County Tipperary. The local land agent tells Knox, a young Irish policeman with divided loyalties, that it is the body of a vagrant and that the landowner Lord Cornwallis wants the case dealt with swiftly and quietly. The potato crop has failed for a second time and the Irish people are dying in their thousands. However when Knox examines the corpse it is clear that this man died wearing a Saville Row suit. Keeping his investigations secret, it becomes clear to Knox that the stranger came from London. Three months earlier Detective Inspector Pyke receives a letter from the daughter of a family friend. She has married a wealthy industrialist who owns ironworks in Merthyd Tydfil and her son has been kidnapped. Lured by the promise of a substantial fee and wanting to escape the tensions of Scotland Yard, Pyke agrees to go to Wales to investigate. There, he discovers a town riven with social discord following the brutal suppression of a workers strike and the importation of cheap Irish labour. The kidnapping is linked to a group of rebels but Pyke soon begins to suspect the case is not as clear cut as it seems. What are the links between the rebellion in Wales and the unrest in Ireland, and has Pyke finally bitten off more than he can chew?
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
Well this was a bit of a departure from the norm, a Pyke mystery with a distinct Celtic flavour!
I found the fist chapter or two completely disorientating if I'm honest as the author has two story threads. Part one being Pyke is called to Merthyr Tydfil to investigate the kidknapping of a young boy. Part two sees young Irish Constable Knox investigating the death of what seems to a detective from London! whose corpse has ended up in Tipperary. But this thread is set a couple of months into the future. The author then switches from one story line to the other till they gradually begin to jion up.
Readers should know young constable Knox is given as much story time as Pyke himself so this had a very different feel to a typical Pyke mystery and again I have to confess the first 100 pages did drag a bit for this reader at least and only my faith in the author and affection for Pyke kept me going. But I am very glad I did because the last two thirds were brilliant!!
Expect lots of architypically evil landowners, lords and industrialists riding rough shod over the down trodden common man. Expect the gutter skirmishes of the poorest of the poor trying to just survive. And of course as this is Pyke, expect a grim, tragic and violent story full of murder and civil unrest.
I will say nothing else re the story line, as to do so would inevitably add in a bit of spoiling and that's the last thing you want when reading a detective story!
Pepper I think also makes a pretty serious effort to illustrate the Irish famine and the many thousands who died from the hunger and cold whilst a seemingly uncaring landed gentry of absentee landlords and the British Whig government of the day stood back offering no aid. Whilst this was well done and was shocking and tragic just did seem a little out of place in a Pyke story. However having got this message in and set a suitably grim historical backdrop Pepper gets back to what he does best, a couple of hundred pages of twisting plot and stomach churning confrontation.
Good stuff and I await with interest where the author will go now!
I found the fist chapter or two completely disorientating if I'm honest as the author has two story threads. Part one being Pyke is called to Merthyr Tydfil to investigate the kidknapping of a young boy. Part two sees young Irish Constable Knox investigating the death of what seems to a detective from London! whose corpse has ended up in Tipperary. But this thread is set a couple of months into the future. The author then switches from one story line to the other till they gradually begin to jion up.
Readers should know young constable Knox is given as much story time as Pyke himself so this had a very different feel to a typical Pyke mystery and again I have to confess the first 100 pages did drag a bit for this reader at least and only my faith in the author and affection for Pyke kept me going. But I am very glad I did because the last two thirds were brilliant!!
Expect lots of architypically evil landowners, lords and industrialists riding rough shod over the down trodden common man. Expect the gutter skirmishes of the poorest of the poor trying to just survive. And of course as this is Pyke, expect a grim, tragic and violent story full of murder and civil unrest.
I will say nothing else re the story line, as to do so would inevitably add in a bit of spoiling and that's the last thing you want when reading a detective story!
Pepper I think also makes a pretty serious effort to illustrate the Irish famine and the many thousands who died from the hunger and cold whilst a seemingly uncaring landed gentry of absentee landlords and the British Whig government of the day stood back offering no aid. Whilst this was well done and was shocking and tragic just did seem a little out of place in a Pyke story. However having got this message in and set a suitably grim historical backdrop Pepper gets back to what he does best, a couple of hundred pages of twisting plot and stomach churning confrontation.
Good stuff and I await with interest where the author will go now!
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
If this is to be the last time that Pyke pounds the beat ,then Andrew Pepper has sent him on his way with his best mystery for our Detective Inspector of Scotland Yard to solve. I love the way we had the two stories running in tandem and once again Andrew Pepper uses his great in-depth research of the period to take us into the heart of the Irish famine,where a supposed body of a vagrant is discovered in a ditch,is wearing a Savile Row suit and then at the same time he drops us deep into the furnesses of the Ironworks of Merthyr Tydfil where Pyke lured by a promise of a substantial reward has to find the son of a wealthy industrialist who has been kidnapped.As with the rest of the Pyke novels,it drips with atmospheric detail of a pre-Victorian murder mystry that had me griped from the beinning to the end.I am looking forward to see what Andrew Pepper does next and if it is half as good as Pyke has been then we will not be disappointed.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
To be fair I havent got to the end of this Pike novel yet but the format is certainly the most intriguing I have come across in years as the action moves from Merthyr Tydfil to Ireland and back again in a myriad of consecutive but shifting dates so that while Pike is investigating a child kidnapping in Merthyr he is himself apparently found dead in Ireland.To be continued...... The settings are vividly depicted in a poverty stricken Ireland and a relatively prosperous steel works in Wales in the grim winter of 1846-1847.Gripping stuff.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
A great (final) Pyke mystery !?
This Pyke mystery by Andrew Pepper is set during the winter of 1846/1847 in which the great famine in Ireland cost a lot of people their lives. Read more
Published 10 months ago by Clemens Schoonderwoert
Pepper with a hint of Scarrow.
I have enjoyed the evolution of Pyke and find his charactor and timeline intersting. The author is able to transport the essence of the time, place and opinions, moods of the... Read more
Published 10 months ago by Mr. Revey Ace
Very good storytelling.
As stated in other reviews this book was something of a departure from the usual Pyke stories, that it was still very good reading even with the Irish potatoe famines of the 1840s... Read more
Published 11 months ago by Nicholas Peacock MA
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