A former Customs and Police Officer, Andrew Hill’s first book in a crime series set in the New Forest, where he lived for 30 years, will be published in Spring 2022. An avid reader across the crime genre and regular at crime writing festivals, he now lives in West Sussex and works in property.
Josef Engel is a tailor in the historic
southern French town of Cordes-sur-Ciel. He is a survivor of the Nazi death
camps and of one in particular - Die Schneider Lager – The Cutter’s/Tailors
Camp. This was where the inmate’s striped uniforms were made and overseen by
the brutal Standartenfuhrer Artur Samler. It seems that someone wants a list of
survivors of that camp and they come first for Josef.
When Commandant Benoit Amand, of the Police
Nationale arrives at the scene, he finds a tall, pale, thin man playing the
piano - Solomon Creed. Creed points out the message written in German using the
victim’s own blood, ‘Finishing what is done’. The
Commandant arrests Creed and so the adventure begins.
If you’ve read the first Creed book, then you
know that he is a man with a certain skill set. He is a man searching for his
past and this is the reason why he’s at the tailor’s house. His suit bears a
label with the tailor’s name and ‘This suit was made for Mr.
Solomon Creed’.
The author zigzags us across
France as Solomon escapes the police, meeting the daughter and grandson of the
tailor (seeking to protect them). Solomon also searches to find the other
survivors and perhaps some clues to unlock his past. The pursuer becomes the
pursued when a shadowy right-wing French Nationalist group appear hell-bent on
finding the other survivors, utilising a network that is spread across France
which includes wealthy business people, politicians, newspapers and even the Sûreté.
We get to understand who
Solomon Creed once was, though now he’s a man with a firm moral compass,
prepared to do bad things to bad people when necessary. I enjoyed the bond that
he forms with the grandson Leo who has a form of synaesthesia that enables him
to see people’s moods in colour form.
There is clever use of dual
timeline in the narrative which helps fill in the backstory of Die Schneider
Lager. There’s also a gathering pace and sense of urgency as the chase hots up
and comes complete with a twist that you’ll never see coming.
Whilst The Boy
Who Saw does work as a standalone, I’d highly recommend reading
them in order as this instalment has kept the high standards that Simon Toyne
brought to the previous stories. I truly hope that Solomon Creed # 3 is not too
far down the road.
