"A Lily of the Field" by John Lawton

Finished this last night. It's the third novel I've read by Lawton, the first in a number of years.

Lawton writes historical crime fiction of a somewhat unusual kind, with the emphasis more on the "historical" than the "crime". The historical settings range from the 1930s to the early 1960s, centering around WW2 and cold war espionage. There are elements of the police procedural and the spy story, and there are fairly complicated plots with bloody climaxes. But there are also quite long stretches that are more about famous or colourful characters, or the political or cultural climate of the times. I'm not sure the two sides are particularly well integrated, though the murder story usually seems to involve a representative figure of the times, known personally to the detective, Frederick Troy. Troy works for Scotland Yard but is independently wealthy, as the son of a rich Russian immigrant newspaper magnate, and knows lots of members of the British political and cultural establishment.

"A Lily of the Field" is set in post-WW2 London and has to do with atomic spies and classical musicians. Most of the first half of the book is backstory, in terms of the murder mystery plot, relating the 1930s Vienna childhood of a talented girl cellist who is eventually sent to Auschwitz. We also follow an exiled atomic scientist who is interned by the British and then works on the Manhattan project. In the second half of the book we see Troy in postwar London, investigating the murder of a mysterious east European character, apparently a mediocre painter by profession.

I think Lawton is a pretty good writer and storyteller, who may be getting better. I enjoyed "A Lily of the Field" more than I remember liking the earlier novels I read a few years ago. The approach to historical fiction works, I guess, though the namedropping of famous historical figures met by the characters can seem a little silly. In "A Lily of the Field" there is also the matter of the Holocaust. Lawton seems to have done his research on Auschwitz and treats the history with respect. It's part of the experience of a major character, and the effect on the character is handled more or less seriously, not just as useful backstory for an action figure.