Böcker av Christina Koning

Book 5 in the thrilling inter-war mystery series: Blind Detective.

Book 6 in the thrilling inter-war mystery series, The Blind Detective.

First published as Game of Chance under A. C. Koning.1929. Blinded war veteran Frederick Rowlands has escaped the bustle of London to establish a secure life for himself and his family in the countryside. But everything is about to change when an old friend, Chief Inspector Douglas, asks for his assistance in tracking down the killer of a beautiful dancer. That there is a link between the murder and St Dunstan''s, the institute for blind ex-servicemen of which Rowlands himself is a member, is only one of the puzzling features of the case.Transported back into the whirl of London in order to unravel the mystery surrounding the dead woman, the Blind Detective is caught up in a deadly game of chance. A series of breathtaking twists and turns force him to confront his past, and to risk everything - including own life - in the process.

First published as Line of Sight under A. C. Koning. London, summer 1927. Frederick Rowlands, a First World War veteran who was blinded at Ypres, is working as a switchboard operator in the City when an over-heard telephone conversation draws him into a murder case. From then on, his safe and conventional life, painstakingly reconstructed after the horrors he experienced in the trenches, is shaken to its very foundation. As Fred is drawn deeper into a web of lies and half-truths, he must rely on his remaining senses, as well as his remarkable memory, to uncover the shocking truth about the murder which threatens to undermine everything he holds dear.

Edinburgh 1977. The end of an era. The end of the postwar boom. The end of the sexual revolution. But for Saul and Catherine, postgraduate students meeting at the departmental party at the university, it seems like a beginning of sorts. Their attraction to one another is instantaneous, and the affair that follows at first seems all-absorbing - a heady mix of sexual desire and literary passions. But then the arrival of Saul's wife, Virginia, from New York, introduces darker notes of built and doubt, as the lovers find themselves increasingly enmeshed in their clandestine liaison.

The Swinging Sixties are coming to an end, but for Constance Reason, living out her twilight years in the Sussex countryside, they have largely passed her by. So she is in for a rude awakening, when her louche nephew, Sandy, turns up out of the blue, with his sinister boyfriend, Ray. Next on the scene is Iseult, Sandy's unworldly cousin (who has rather an ill-judged crush on him) and his melodramatic Aunt Leonora, once a leading light of the West End stage. Quite a crowd - and that's before Nick, a famous pop singer oozing bohemian decadence, appears, entourage in tow. Then all it takes is a whiff of midsummer madness - and marijuana - to unleash some very strange goings on indeed. Suddenly everybody's having the time of their lives. The question is - will they all live to tell the tale?

This is a story of love and astronomy; music and silence; secrets and truth-telling; of world-changing discoveries, and unrequited desire. Moving from York in the 1780s to Regency Bath, and then to Hanover in the 1840s, it concerns the lives of three people-all astronomers. There is Caroline, torn between her passion for music and her passion for the stars; John, deaf from childhood, whose extraordinary mathematical gifts afford him perspectives not available to others; and Edward, friend and mentor to Caroline and to John, who must conceal his innermost feelings from them both. All three find fulfilment in the heavens for the set- backs and disappointments they encounter on earth. All three, in time, come to know the truth about variable stars.