Lionel, the Watch and the Walk-in Wardrobe
by VIOLA VON HARRACH
Ned Lawton’s debut novel is a murder mystery, a tale of lost causes, secret codes, and conspiracy theories, with a few untoward deaths along the way. There is also, as the title implies, a nod to CS Lewis.
Jeremy Catchpole, nicknamed Worm, is a colourful second-hand bookseller in Hastings. He has a penchant for dressing up, and participating with gusto in local festivities, such as Carnival, and Bonfire Night. He is also an amateur sleuth.
In London, Grandpa Pith, Lionel Arthur Smith CBE, is in the final stages of Alzheimer’s. Lionel has had to give up independent living, and is now being looked after by his daughter in law, Maggie, and granddaughter Emily whom he calls Goldilocks. Some time before the book begins, his son was killed in a mysterious hit and run accident. Little do either Maggie or Emily guess, that many years ago, Lionel was a key member of a Secret Services operation that hit the headlines all over the world.
Two copies of the same children’s book turn up in a house clearance in Hastings. One copy is pristine, the other has pages missing and is much annotated. Worm, together with fellow bookseller Trevor, set forth to trace the owner, who turns out to be Lionel. They become obsessed with finding out the truth about the annotated book. What follows is sleuthing that doesn’t quite go to plan and, without plot spoilers, some life and death moments.
HE WRITES AFFECTIONATELY AND WITH APLOMB ABOUT HASTINGS
On the whole, Lawton makes a good job of the story and isn’t afraid to delve in order to drive a point home. However, there are moments, particularly halfway through the book, when the pace of the plot is too slack to really keep the reader’s attention. Rather a lot about Secret Service meetings for example. Also, there are times when irrelevant and unnecessary details threaten to swamp the credibility of the plot. Most of Lawton’s characters are recognisable types, though the Secret Service agents are perhaps deliberately less clearly defined than they might be.
Emily and her mother, Maggie, need more in the way of feelings to really come alive. They have suffered so much – the loss of a husband and father and in Emily’s case the close loving relationship with her grandfather. Lawton doesn’t really take the opportunity to explore their emotional states or sense of grief which is a shame as this would have made the storyline more believable. Lawton is at his best when he writes about fairly gruesome happenings. He also writes affectionately and with aplomb about Hastings and environs. He quite knows the locality well and it shows in his writing.
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