A Lily of the Field-Letter A-Review

       Today I finished A Lily of the Field, the 7th book in the Inspector Troy of Scotland Yard series but the fourth in chronological order. This is primarily the story of Meret Voytek, a cello prodigy and Auschwitz survivor; Viktor Rosen, a Jewish concert pianist and Meret's cello teacher; and Karel Szabo, a Hungarian physicist, who works on the Manhattan Project, building the atom bomb at Los Alamos. The story moves from Vienna and Auschwitz to New Mexico and post-war London.

For me, this was his best book since Black Out, the first Inspector Troy I read. The book moved at a quick pace from 1934 into 1948 delving into people's lives, politics and the arts. When Andre Skolnik is shot in the back in a London tube station, Inspector Troy becomes involved and all of the characters come together as he solves the case. 

I particularly like reading about life during WWII and the years after the war and I thought Lawton brought a fresh look to these times. The descriptions of the scarcity of commodities and how the Londoners were reacting to conditions in post-war London were particularly interesting to me. Everything was still rationed but the black market was thriving and the restaurants bustling for people who could afford them. I enjoyed comparing the differences between police work in the 21st century with how Troy dealt with solving crime and working with his narcs, with MI5 and with dead bodies. Lawton gave a good look at life during these years.