DARKNESS BEYOND

In 1933, an English soldier comes back from the dead only to be killed again.

The Black Country town of Folbury owes a lot to the Millar family. For three generations the Millars have provided affordable housing to everyone from factory workers to the upper crust. That is, all but Paul Millar, the restless one of the Millar children, who isn’t interested in anything without an engine. Easily provoked, he went off to Germany to sulk after some real or imagined insult only to return with a bubbly German wife, Liesl. But after Liesl dies, he again leaves his family, this time including his young son, Matt, to fight the Germans in the Great War. Years after his reported death in combat, he reappears still again, shocking his sister, Thea, and his younger brother, Teddy, who’s now in charge of the Millar empire. Before Paul can tell anyone where he’s been or why he’s returned, his body washes up in the River Fol. And once the police doctor confirms that Paul was killed by a shot in the back of his head, it’s up to DI Bert Reardon and his sergeant, Joe Gilmour, to find out why. Methodical and perceptive, Reardon digs further and further back into the Millars’ history to find the story of the man who had to die twice.

Eccles combines a steady police procedural with a tense family drama that hits all the right notes.