‘Clutching her tea towel, Winnie hurried outside and down the garden path. There was a body—a person…a woman…lying on her back on the concrete of the parking area, hair splayed out’
– A Death In The Afternoon
[ About A Death in the Afternoon ]
Summer 1948
London swelters amid post-war reconstruction, while continued rationing and the black-market fuel the rising crime wave. The empires of gangland bosses grow and thrive, protected by corruption and bribery.
During a party in Clapham a student nurse from the South London Hospital for Women and Children dies in a fall from a balcony. Is it an unfortunate accident as the local police believe? Or something more sinister?
The nurse’s friends ask a newly qualified female detective constable to investigate, a woman who is facing difficulties of her own. Before long all are drawn into the criminals’ deadly games, as gangsters jostle for territory and power. With the solution almost within grasp, their lives are threatened and one of them faces a dreadful fate.
Can the others find her before it’s too late?
And what is the truth about…
A Death in the Afternoon?
[ My Review ]
A Death in the Afternoon by Julie Anderson publishes April 29th 2025 with Hobeck Books and is book 2 in The Clapham Trilogy, following on from The Midnight Man which was released in April 2024.
Set in the 1948, The South London Hospital (The SLH) for Women and Children continues to be a central location in A Death in the Afternoon. In The Midnight Man readers were introduced to a super bunch of brave and strong women, in particular Faye Smith and Ellie Peverill. A friendship was formed during some very difficult times but, since then, Faye has left her job in the canteen of the hospital. After her investigative abilities were noticed by certain people she was encouraged to join the ranks of the local police force.
Faye is feisty and with her highly tuned skills and inquisitive mind, she relishes this new role as a detective constable. Faye knows she has to prove herself to the team for various reasons and is determined not to slip up. When she hears of a student nurse’s tragic death, Faye, like everyone is both shocked and saddened but it soon becomes clear that all is not as it seems. Faye trusts the opinions of her ex-colleagues at the SLH that something more sinister has occurred but, without evidence, she is challenged. Stepping on the toes of other officers is not how Faye wishes to launch her career but her inability to remain neutral when she has a whiff of something remiss does not sit well with her.
Faye asks around and gets a few unexpected answers while also unwittingly rattling the nests of a few shadowy individuals. As snippets of information reveal themselves to Faye, she realises that something fishy is going on. With very visual descriptions of a post-war society, Julie Anderson has created a very authentic setting. Rations, grief, devastation and loss sit alongside hope and dreams for a brighter future. But amidst the post-war destruction a criminal element is climbing up out of the gutter and claiming parts of London as its own. In parallel with the arrival of the Windrush Generation, society is changing and many struggle with this new world. Faye has to battle daily with a very misogynistic environment where many are of the opinion that she, and all women, should not be in positions commonly allocated to men. But Faye was never one to back down and her determination for justice ruffles a few wrong features along the way. Has Faye pushed too far this time? Will her fearlessness put her life in danger?
A Death in the Afternoon is a terrific addition to this series. Atmospheric to the core, Julie Anderson has created a very authentic world with a convincing cast of characters and a story that engages the reader. While this novel could be read as a standalone I do recommend you start with book 1, The Midnight Man, to really immerse yourself properly in Julie Anderson’s reimagined 1940’s London.
At its core A Death in the Afternoon is a murder mystery, a whodunit, packed with nasty criminals, an intriguing plot and a gutsy protagonist but it also incorporates romance, family dynamics and the role of women in a fast-moving and changing society. A thoroughly enjoyable read, A Death in the Afternoon also sufficiently tantalising the reader in preparation for the final book in the trilogy.
[ Thank you to Julie Anderson for a copy of A Death in the Afternoon in exchange for my honest review ]
[ Guest Post by Julie Anderson – Wanted: Women to Fight Crime ]
In fact, in the late 1940s Britain’s police forces, the Metropolitan Police amongst them, were in full recruitment mode for both men and women.
Many policemen had gone to fight in WWII, some had not come home and, of those who did, some were incapable of returning to their previous job. Crime in London had risen by 57% during wartime and this continued post war, exacerbated by continued rationing and a thriving black market, which nurtured the rise of organised crime. Not enough men decided to join – there were lots of other employment options for them – so the Met ran a recruitment drive to attract women, even as it discriminated against them (see the difference in wages offered to women in the recruitment ad) because they needed more officers.
My book ‘A Death in the Afternoon’, the second in the Clapham Trilogy, is set in 1948 and it follows, among other elements, the fortunes of a woman, Faye Smith, who joins the Metropolitan Police Force. My heroine becomes a detective, a branch of the Met which has a long history, from Fielding’s Bow Street Runners in 1753 through the creation of the Detective Branch in 1842, which became the Criminal Investigation Branch (CID) in 1878. In 1948 there were some woman police detectives, but not many, so Faye would have been very unusual. She is, most definitely, a woman in a man’s world.
Women, often the wives of serving officers, had been employed by the force since the close of the nineteenth century, as ‘matrons’, whose job was to guard female prisoners. It wasn’t until 1915, however, that women were recruited as police constables, with full powers of arrest. My heroine shares a surname with that very first woman PC, Edith Smith.
Yet many woman recruits weren’t given powers of arrest and had to perform ‘domestic’ tasks, like paperwork, driving and looking after women and children who had been arrested. In London, Dorothy Peto, an early campaigner to have full female representation in the police, became Staff Officer in charge of the women’s section. Two years later, in 1932 she became the first female Superintendent and headed the newly formed A4 Branch, the Women’s Branch of the Metropolitan Police. During her tenure she expanded the number of women police from less than 60 to over 200 and, when she retired, in 1946, the Met’s Woman’s Branch had over half the female police in the country.
A real achievement, but to put it into context, there were over fifty-two thousand police officers in England and Wales at that time, so Peto’s section had less than half a percent. Nonetheless, things were moving forward and the ‘marriage bar’, preventing married women, or those who got married, from serving was abolished in 1946. In 1948 women were allowed to join the Police Federation.
Peto’s focus was on dealing with juvenile crime and indecency, especially given the social problems caused by WWII. Specialist roles developed, like the SSO, the Sex Statement Officer, who took the statements of sex workers and from women who had been assaulted, abused or raped. I have a character in the novel, Lydia, who is an SSO, but who wants very much to do more than take statements and make the tea. In 1946, Peto’s successor leading A4, Elizabeth Bather, who was the first female Chief Superintendent, wanted to expand the role of women police officers beyond the ‘domestic’. She appears in the novel and encourages Faye but also warns her what she is up against and how she will be judged.
One of the major problems Faye must face, quite aside from criminals and the prejudice, is the endemic corruption in the police force at the time. Organised crime in London had suborned police, the press, politicians and even members of the judiciary, it was said, often through bribery, but also favours in the Soho clubs where drugs and sex were supplied. Low level corruption occurred in most police stations, turning a blind eye to the selling of illegal contraband, for example, in return for some of those goods, or taking items from shops which had already been robbed. Only in 1972, with the appointment of Sir Robert Mark specifically to stamp out corruption, was this tackled in a cross-force way.
There are echoes of Faye’s fictional experience in real life today. The Casey Report of 2023 found a culture of misogyny, homophobia and racism in the Met and the misogyny extended to female police officers within the force, something with which Faye would be familiar. Plus ça change.
A Death in the Afternoon is published by Hobeck Books on 29th April 2025 (paperback £10.99, ebook £3.00) and Isis Audiobooks.
[ Bio ]
Julie Anderson is a CWA Dagger-listed crime fiction writer and author.
Her latest A Death in the Afternoon (Hobeck Books, April 2025) is the second in the Clapham Trilogy of mysteries, all set in South London in the 1940s. It follows Book One, The Midnight Man (Hobeck Books, April 2024). Both are available at all good book shops and on Amazon.
Julie has also written a trio of Whitehall thrillers, the last of which, Opera (Claret Press) was long-listed for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger 2023. This is the third in a series of political thrillers featuring Cassandra Fortune. Plague, the first, was published in September 2020 and Oracle, the second in May 2021. Julie has also written a two book series of adventure stories set in southern Spain during the 13th century. The first of these, Reconquista, was long listed for Mslexia Children’s Novel, 2016.
Find out more at: https://julieandersonwriter.com/
