Home Front Detective Books In Order

Publication Order of Home Front Detective Books

Home Front Detective series by Edward Marston
Author Edward Marston writes the “Home Front Detective” series of historical mystery novels. The series stars Inspector Harvey Marmion, who is usually partnered with Sergeant Keedy on his cases, with the books being set around 1915, 1916, and 1917. World War I features prominently in some fashion in these books.

“A Bespoke Murder” is the first novel in the “Home Front Detective” series and was released in 2011. May of 1915. While zeppelin bombs fall on London and with the Lusitania’s sinking, anti-German hysteria reaches a fever pitch and there is a surge on attacks against German immigrants. Not even the West End of London is immune. Jacob Stein’s bespoke tailoring business comes under a brutal attack, leaving his daughter (Ruth) raped, Jacob himself dead, and his safe ransacked.

Inspector Marmion is detailed to the case and he faces quite the uphill struggle to track down the perpetrators, even up to the chaos of the Front Line. However was the murder exactly as opportunistic as it first seemed, or did somebody with a deadly grudge plan this attack?

Once more Edward has created a credible atmosphere inside of an intriguing story.

“An Instrument of Slaughter” is the second novel in the “Home Front Detective” series and was released in 2012. January of 1916. The second novel features a young conscientious objector, named Cyril Ablatt, who is refusing to join the army. After he makes a rousing speech at this mass meeting, he gets bludgeoned to death.

Inspector Marmion and Sergeant Keedy get assigned the case. The crime arouses very little public sympathy and Ablatt’s buddies fear that they are also in danger. When there is another murderous attack in the exact same part of London, the press is harshly critical of Scotland Yard.

Marmion’s not convinced that both attacks of the same person. Nor does he believe Ablatt was the saint described by his friends and family.

Brimming with tenderness, heroism, suspense and chicanery, as it crisply evokes a vivid picture of this era.

“Five Dead Canaries” is the third novel in the “Home Front Detective” series and was released in 2013. 1916. While thousands of Brits are out fighting on the Front Line, there’s a new breed of woman that emerges to hold the Home Front together. Fiery spirited and fiercely independent, the munitionettes, or ‘canaries’, are easily recognizable with their chemically stained yellow faces.

Among the raucous group of women is Florrie Duncan, who’s planning on celebrating her birthday in style at the Golden Goose pub. However the celebrations get cut short when all but one of them, a pretty young Irish girl named Maureen Quinn, are murdered in a brutal explosion.

Inspector Marmion and Sergeant Keedy take the investigation over and it leads them into a series of unforeseen dangers.

“Deeds of Darkness” is the fourth novel in the “Home Front Detective” series and was released in 2014. This fourth installment of the series confronts Sergeant Joe Keedy and Inspector Harvey Marmion with a case that tests every single one of their abilities.

June, 1916. A young woman is strangled to death in a cinema during a Charlie Chaplin film. It is revealed that her husband is away in the army. The detectives wonder why the killer would risk committing a murder in a public place such as this. They make slow progress at first and then the crime gets pushed off of the front pages of the papers by the beginning of the battle of the Somme.

Marmion, because his son’s involved, has got a special interest in some events in France however his attention is soon brought back to London when another murder occurs. One young art student is discovered dead in a public park and there are some clear indications that she is the victim of the exact same killer. So where will he strike next?

“Dance of Death” is the fifth novel in the “Home Front Detective” series and was released in 2015. Marmion and Keedy are confronted with their most baffling case.

Simon Wilder, in the small hours of the morning, slips out of some house and walks jauntily toward his own home. It takes him just a few seconds to realize that there’s a Zeppelin raid happening and that several people have come out of their houses in order to look up at the sky. Wilder, hearing the drone overhead, looks upward. When this Zeppelin bursts into flame suddenly, having been shot down by a British plane, there’s this concerted cheer from people that then break into patriotic song. Except Wilder is not able to join in because he’s just been stabbed to death.

Marmion and Keedy get assigned the case, and learn that Wilder was this brilliant dancer that ran a well-attended Dance Studio. Women formed the majority of those that had private lessons from the guy, making jealous husbands potential suspects. There are many others. Seems Wilder had this knack for creating enemies. The detectives must trawl through a giant number of them, and face grave danger in the process, before they’re able to start tracking the killer down, and they’re hampered at each stage by severe friction on the domestic front. This dance of death proves to be a hazardous one.

“The Enemy Within” is the sixth novel in the “Home Front Detective” series and was released in 2016. Pentonville Prison. Wally Hubbard is serving a rather long sentence for committing arson. However after he befriended and tricked one officer, he makes his audacious escape. Inspector Marmion, the detective that originally arrested Hubbard, has been warned to watch his back, however it seems that Hubbard has got another target in his murderous sights.

But the investigation is mired in confusion, as the identities of victim and killer become increasingly ambiguous. One inmate at this internment camp that may be a spy sending out intelligence to the Germans just complicates matters even further, and the multiplying manhunts, along with Marmion’s concerns for Paul (his withdrawn and injured son), leave this detective desperate and possibly with too many threads to untangle.