The Midnight Man

It’s always exciting when a book finally hits the bookshelves on publication and especially so with the first in a new series. The Midnight Man is published on 30th April 2024 by Hobeck Books.

Hobeck are specialist crime and thriller publishers and I signed for them last year to write a trio of historical crime novels all set in south London, called the Clapham Trilogy. The Midnight Man is the first of these.

Set in Clapham, where else, in the period immediately following the second World War. These are, I hope, immersive evocations of that period, over which the war cast a deep shadow, but during which the building blocks of a new society – the Welfare State – were put in place. Despite the out-pouring of jubilation and relief that the war was over, it was an austere and hard time, with rationing even more stringent than during the war years. In 1946, when The Midnight Man is set, Britain also experienced the coldest winter then on record.

Events of the book take place at the South London Hospital for Women and Children, a real place and an unusual one ( I’ll be blogging about it as publication day approaches ). Some of its buildings still stand, near Clapham South Underground station as the photograph (right) shows. This was the ‘New Wing’ erected in the 1930s. It is now an apartment building, above a supermarket ( the entrance to which can just be seen on the far left).

Other places which feature are Westbury Court, a block of flats above Clapham South Underground station and station parade, which is still there; the Odeon cinema, now a wine warehouse on Balham Hill and the deep shelters on Clapham Common. The Common itself features quite heavily too.

I find the period fascinating, a time when Britain was virtually bankrupt and many people had suffered horribly during the recent war, but which saw the creation of the popular and supportive society in which I grew up; a society designed for its people, not just for profit. This has, in many ways, disappeared, though some vestiges remain. There was huge societal change, with the British Nationality Act of 1948 prompting the influx of migrants from the erstwhile colonies. The HMS Empire Windrush docked at Tilbury in July 1948 and many of its passengers also gravitated to Clapham, where they were billeted in the deep shelters. But that, as they say, is another story – Book Two to be precise.

I leave you with the back cover ‘blurb”.

Winter 1946

One cold dark night, as a devastated London shivers through the transition to post-war life, a young nurse goes missing from the South London Hospital for Women & Children. Her body is discovered hours later behind a locked door.

Two women from the hospital join forces to investigate. Both determined not to return to the futures laid out for them before the war, the unlikely sleuths must face their own demons and dilemmas as they pursue –

The Midnight Man

A thoroughly immersive evocation of a world now lost, with all the thrills and shocks of a classic mystery.

Watch out for more blog posts abut the book, the history behind it, its setting and some of the real people who inspired it.