Forests of the Night: #1, A Johnny Hawke Novel [Paperback]

David Stuart Davies (Author)

Book Description

Series: Johnny Hawke | Publication Date: April 14, 2008

By all accounts, Pamela Palfrey was plain and painfully shy?the sort of girl that few people miss in the best of times. And with Nazi bombs nightly raining down on London, and hundreds dying every day, these aren?t the best of times. This is particularly true for Johnny Hawke, who lost an eye?and his dreams of a military career?to an accident in basic training. Though he has set up shop as a private investigator, Hawke is doing little more than nursing his feelings of inadequacy until the Palfreys hire him to find their missing daughter. It soon becomes clear that Pamela was nursing some secrets of her own, and Hawke?s passion for the case deepens as he comes to sympathize with the young woman?s dreams?which, like his own, have been painfully thwarted.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Noted Sherlock Holmes expert Davies (Veiled Detective) launches a new series with this competent, if unspectacular whodunit set in WWII London and featuring Johnny Hawke, who has just started a new career as a PI after a misfiring gun cost him his left eye and a career in the army. His caseload is fairly run-of-the-mill until Eric and Freda Palfrey enlist him to trace their missing 27-year-old daughter, Pamela. Hawke soon finds that the plain, middle-class girl had been living a double life, and that her secret role as a high-class prostitute has led to her death, probably at the hands of one of her clients, one of whom is a prominent film star. With its decent atmospherics, this novel compares favorably to John Gardner's WWII Suzie Mountford series (Troubled Midnight, etc.), but Davies's workmanlike prose doesn't match that of Charles Todd's Ian Rutledge series or Jacqueline Winspear's Maisie Dobbs mysteries. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Sherlock Holmes expert Davies moves from nonfiction to fiction with this series debut set in wartime England. Johnny Hawke, who lost an eye when his rifle misfired in a training accident, nurses feelings of inadequacy as German bombs rain on London. Attempting to eke out a living as a private detective, he falls into a juicy murder case when the parents of a young woman hire him to find their daughter. It's quickly apparent that the young woman was living two very different lives, and when she turns up dead, Hawke continues to dig into her past, despite his clients' objections. Wartime London makes a great setting for crime fiction, and Davies uses it shrewdly, not so much as an excuse to decorate the action with scenes of Blitz-torn London, though there are some of those, but, rather, as a kind of psychological landscape. We feel the war through the characters' dampened emotions and anguished expressions of both guilt and frustration. The mystery itself ends weakly, and a subplot about a homeless boy drifts toward sentimentality, but Johnny Hawke is still a keeper. Bill Ott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Felony & Mayhem (April 14, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 193339787X
• ISBN-13: 978-1933397870
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,341,633 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Hard Boiled Blitz Detective, February 24, 2010

By 

Jeannie Mancini "vernefan" - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Forests of the Night: A Johnny Hawke Novel (Hardcover)

With Forests of the Night, the first installment of the Johnny Hawke novels, David Stuart Davies deviates from his realm of Sherlock Holmes and introduces a character that author Val McDermid phrased as a "hero with a heart". Johnny Hawke is a compassionate private investigator who is afflicted with the impairment of having only one eye, a casualty of a gun misfiring during his first week after joining the army to serve his country.

This new series takes place in 1940. The place is London during WWII's famous Blitz where the Germans daily bombard the city with nightly attacks leaving London scrambling for cover when air raids warn of incoming planes that will rain destruction killing many people each and every night.

Discharged from the army as disabled, Johnny Hawke turns hard boiled detective and opens up his own private investigation office. The story opens with a visit from a Mr. and Mrs. Palfrey asking Johnny to help them find their missing daughter Pamela who appears to have dropped out of existence two months ago. The next day following their interview, Pamela is found dead in her bed, stabbed through the heart in cold blooded murder. It's now up to Johnny to uncover the clues to why she was so brutally killed, and why she had turned to prostitution and changed her name to Pammie Palmer.

With many suspects all clamoring to give Johnny the slip, this is a pretty straightforward old fashioned who-dunit in the style of Dashell Hammett or Mickey Spillane. Johnny Hawke however is not the usual cold brutish P.I. There are scenes of Johnny falling in love with the girl, temporarily adopting a small street urchin who worms his way into Johnny's heart and home, and many pages of him showing compassion and kindness even amidst the hardships of war and within the criminal minds we see as the bad guys.

Perhaps just a little sappy and corny due to the lifestyle simplicity of the 40's time period, but for those who love the Noir style murder mysteries, and for readers like me who get tired of the contemporary serial killer violent mysteries being pumped out by the thousands for shock effect, I loved this flash to the past entertaining murder-come-lightly. This is the era of trench coats and fedora hats, rotary telephones, and when scripts for books and movies were right out of Casablanca or Dick Tracy. I can't wait to read the rest of the series now that I've found this one-eyed chivalrous private eye! For something fun and out of the ordinary, give Johnny Hawke a chance!

4.0 out of 5 stars A compelling read, February 6, 2007

By 

Armchair Interviews (Minneapolis, MN) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Forests of the Night: A Johnny Hawke Novel (Hardcover)

Author David Stuart Davies is the former editor of Sherlock, a crime fiction magazine and the author of several books on Sherlock Holmes. He edits the Crime Writers' Association magazine, Red Herrings.

If you love period mysteries and anything British, you'll be right at home with the novel, Forests of the Night.

In 1939, young John Hawke, a policeman, is preparing, as is most of Britain, to fight for his country in WWII. His plans change with one shot from a rifle during training. The gun explodes and he loses an eye. Not one to sit behind a desk, John leaves the police force and sets up shop, in London, as a private investigator.

In 1940, John is hired by a young woman's family to find her. Pamela Palfrey been missing for several months. John soon learns that the dowdy, plain girl her parents knew is not the same beautiful, promiscuous woman that others knew.

When Pamela's body is found, John decides that he must find her murderer. His investigation into her life as a 'star-struck' wannabe actress leads John to the fading film actor Gordon Moore. A chance meeting with a young runaway boy also is connected to Gordon Moore. The boy tugs at John's heart because of the parallels to John's own life.

This book is compelling. His dialogue is filled with dry humor and just sparse enough to evoke strong emotions from the reader. The characters are well developed--and you'll either like them or root for their downfall.

I hope that John Hawke will make a return appearance.

Armchair Interviews says: John Hawke is a welcome addition to the mystery scene.

4.0 out of 5 stars an abosrbing read but not very atmospheric, January 26, 2007

By 

tregatt (Portland, Oregon) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Forests of the Night: A Johnny Hawke Novel (Hardcover)

A fan of the PBS series, "Foyle's War," I grabbed my copy of David Stuart Davies' "Forest of the Night," the first installment in a new series set in WWII London, featuring private detective Johnny Hawke, with high hopes. Were my expectations met? Yes, and no -- and I'm not being purposefully coy here. The mystery subplot made for a very absorbing and intriguing; however, the history bits -- period detail, atmosphere, etc. were a bit paper thin, and the language seemed a bit heavy and clunky at times. All in all, though, I was happy with "Forests of the Night."

When a jammed rifle causes ex-police constable Johnny Hawke to loose an eye and ends his grandiose plans of performing feats of glory for King and country, Johnny decides to use his detecting skills and become a private detective instead. Things start off slowly at first, that is until a rather dreary middle class couple, Mr. and Mrs. Palfrey hire Johnny to find their missing daughter. Plain and frumpish Pamela, who seemed to spend a lot of time daydreaming about film stars, had left home to move in with a girl friend, but now, Pamela seems to have disappeared. No one at her place of work seems to know where she has vanished to, and the girl that Pamela claimed she would be rooming with seems not to exist at all. Johnny starts his investigation immediately, and one of the first things he discovers is that Pamela was leading quite the double life -- remaining quiet and plain and frumpish for her parents, while blossoming into quite the glamour girl while at work. It is little wonder that Pamela decided to move out and leave no trace for her parents to track her down. Johnny thinks he knows what this case is all about, that is until this missing persons case suddenly becomes a case of murder and the list of suspects includes a well known film star. And even though the police have made a quick arrest, Johnny is quite sure that they have arrested the wrong person, and is determined to use all his detecting skills and ingenuity to nab the real killer...

"Forests of the Night" was a fairly quick and easy read. The plot wasn't too complicated and there were really very few plot twists, even though there were quite a few red herring suspects. Personally, I had anticipated a more complex plot and so was a little discombobulated by the straightforwardness of the novel. What I really missed though was the period details and atmosphere. Perhaps this was because I had "Foyle's War" at the back of my mind. This, of course, was not fair to David Stuart Davies and the book. However, while some of my expectations were unfairly laid on, I have to own that I did find the author's prose style to be heavy and clunky and jarring at times; and this really did not lend itself to very smooth reading. All in all though I would recommend "Forests of the Night" as an engaging 3 1/2 star read.