'Early next morning a pair of streatcher bearers found him and brought him back to the British lines, still encased in a suit of mud. He was put in the hands of a medical orderly who freed him by tapping at the shell with a cook's ladle as though he were cracking an egg, peeling off the covering a piece at a time. "There !" he said. "Just like a new-laid chick". The words had a perfect effect on Pike. All of a sudden he was reborn! A dark urge, like a dragon waking, stirred his entrails . . .'
Rennie Airth takes what at first sight seems to be a Twenties drawing room murder mystery and transforms it into an edge of the seat serial killer thriller set against a skilfully evoked backdrop of war wounded England-
compelling stuff.
