Why should the devil have all the best tunes?

The Salvation Army has come prancing and singing from the slums of London to the poorest quarters of Oxford, but along with its red hot gospel preaching and music hall songs it brings a prohibition message which sparks immediate opposition and violence.

An Army soldier – an ex-drunk – is brutally killed and a note suggests that the Salvation Army’s shadowy enemy, the Skeleton Army, is responsible.

With the police unwilling to come between the two forces, Non Vaughan, aspiring journalist and great hope of the Oxford women’s college movement, and Basil Rice, Jesus College fellow and union-sanctioned guardian of the dead man’s family, are compelled to investigate.

But as the threats from both sides escalate, resulting in a second death, Non and Basil realise that they must stop the fighting before it results in an outright war. For with the University’s annual commemoration week fast approaching, the entire city could be engulfed in fire and blood…

My Review

I was so conflicted reading this that I really had to get my thoughts together before writing my review. I am an admirer of the work that the Salvation Army do, even today. They are the best at finding people, and at marching bands, but it’s all too wrapped up in religion for me. And in the late 19th century, it was all about temperance, finding Jesus, confessing your sins and ‘glory fits’. This is where people were so overcome with the Holy Spirit that they fainted clean away and had to be taken into another room to recover. Excuse my cynicism, but it’s also a form of mass hypnosis and probably too tight corsets.

The Skeleton Army was a real thing in the 1880s. Starting in Weston-super-Mare, or maybe Exeter, it became prevalent around the South of England mainly, and spread to Whitechapel and Oxford (in the book). Members were mostly working class – Tomrags – and resented the Salvationists telling them to drink milk instead of beer. Well, you would, wouldn’t you. They also resented the university people thinking they were superior. Unfortunately, even though I understand their sentiments, the talk of real Englishmen etc smacks too much of the EDL, and confrontations accompanied by rent-a-mob, looking for a punch up.

But this book is really about Non, who we met in A Bitter Remedy. Non is a feminist of her day. She believes in education for women, but wants them to be fully accepted into university and take the same exams as men, with the same degree at the end. But as well as a career in academia, she wants to be a journalist. Does she want a husband and family? The jury is still out.

We also met Basil, who is unmarried, but not because he hasn’t yet met the right woman, or because he is married to his ‘job’ at the university, but because his ‘proclivities’ would see him arrested (right up to 1967, unbelievably). He was in love with Teddy and distraught when Teddy went to London and married so he could appear ‘normal’. Teddy says Basil is a f***ing coward.

I’ve adored the first two books in the series, and I get the feeling that this is not the last we are going to see of Non and Basil.

Many thanks to The Pigeonhole, the author, and my fellow Pigeons for making this such an enjoyable read.

About the Author

Alis Hawkins grew up on a dairy farm in Cardiganshire. Her inner introvert thought it would be a good idea to become a shepherd and, frankly, if she had, she might have been published sooner. As it was, three years reading English at Corpus Christi College, Oxford revealed an extrovert streak and a social conscience which saw her train as a Speech and Language Therapist. She has spent the subsequent three decades variously bringing up two sons, working with children and young people on the autism spectrum and writing fiction, non-fiction and plays. She writes the kind of books she likes to read: character-driven historical crime and mystery fiction with what might be called literary production values.