1923, London, and while lounging in, well, the lounge of Claridge’s hotel with his sister and her fiancé, Jack Haldean, ex-flying ace, crime-writer and occasional sleuth, spots one man he never wanted to see again – the explorer Durant Craig. It seems the feeling is reciprocated, as Durant confronts him, ranting about the terrible wrong that Jack did him, something that Jack will not deny.

Later in the week, Jack is a fancy dress party in the country, when he spots Craig again. But things are disrupted when, in the distance, a car is spotted on fire. It’s too late to save the driver – especially as they were dead before the car started burning. Jack finds himself inveigled into a deeply personal investigation – because Jack has a dreadful secret in his past that is about to come back with a vengeance…

So I’m back to the series that I seem destined to review out of order. There are eleven books to date, and I’ve reviewed books one, nine, two, ten, three, eleven and eight in that order. So, true to form, it’s time for book four. Worth mentioning that books one to four are now easily available as ebooks for an utter pittance, and I’m presuming the rest are on the way.

This is a great read – having got used to Jack being a suave man-about-town, it’s quite jarring to see him fall apart when made to confront the secrets in his past. There is so much to love about this book – the recreation of the age, whether it being a fancy dress party or a flight over Petra, is spot on and Dolores’ prose brings it to vivid life.

The person who wrote the blurb on the front cover, by the way, really ought to read some of that vivid prose and then kick themselves royally in the arse for calling this a cozy book. If I may offer exhibit one, the flashback to Jack’s wartime experiences or exhibit two, page 267 when a gentleman by the name of Kazim describes his most intense pleasure? I appreciate that the cozy label and the style of cover, reminiscent of other series set around the same time period which certainly do deserve that description, may well increase sales – yay! – but I do hope it doesn’t put off fans of the actual Golden Age, because this is what this is far closer to.

Having said that, this is less of a whodunit than the other books in the series. The first half plays out in such a manner, but once we find out what secrets Jack is hiding, the book takes on the mantle of a thriller more than a mystery. I’ve read a few Golden Age thrillers and I generally don’t get on with them very well, but this one had me riveted. I’m not sure that I was supposed to be surprised by the reversal – it’s revealed pretty early, so I’m guessing not – but this is a great tale, very well told, that had me completely gripped.

Fingers crossed the rest of the books are on their way – but I’ve got copies of them already, so you can expect more on them here soon…