Customer Reviews

Trumpets Sound No More

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Jon Redfern hails from Alberta, Canada. He worked as a free-lance journalist for both the Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star; as well as stints with the CBC and work as a children's playwright. He has published numerous short stories in literary journals. His graduate thesis dealt with operas and melodramas in London's great theaters. His first novel, THE BOY MUST DIE garnered the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Crime Novel in 2002. Jon teaches English at Centennial College in Toronto.

Set in 1840, TRUMPETS SOUND NO MORE is the tale of a brutal killing within the theater world in London. Samuel Cake's battered body is found with no apparent motive. Inspector Owen Endersby is pressured by his clueless superiors to solve the murder before Christmas Eve. Endersby is known for his scientific method, which is at odds with the political games played in his department. In spite of pressure to make a reckless arrest, Endersby enters the world of street vendors; servants; lenders; and the vagaries of the theater in search of the killer:

"He stood by me there once he had received his money. I had no intention of ever paying off the full amount of the note, and he knew that. But on Friday last, he wore a different face. No longer pleading, no longer like a frightened servant. He stood there, and he threatened me with dismissal if I did not stop taking rum and hashish. 'Into the street, Miss Root, where starvation awaits you,' he said. It was that simple..."

Redfern does a beautiful job of presenting Victorian London with all of its blemishes: an overcrowded city where children were routinely abused by elders versus the world of performance, considered vulgar, even as the wealthiest attended the shows. His plot is carefully laid out; characters range from the sedate and tranquil Endersby and his sweet wife to the sad and talented child Betty Loxton. In the middle are the actors and lenders, with their macabre dance of life and death. TRUMPETS is a solid historical mystery written by an author who has spent years researching this fascinating period. Redfern is a sensitive author whose books transport the reader back to the Victorian Age in order to entertain and enlighten. This is a beautifully crafted and haunting mystery.

Shelley Glodowski

Senior Reviewer