The 1930s setting is to die for, including many evocative details, like the speaking tube with which Rachel communicates with the driver of her Rolls-Royce, and the presence of a yellowing poster for Hitchcock’s 1929 thriller Blackmail, hanging in the luggage office of a London train station. Best of all, the way that Edwards keeps deepening the creepiness of this mystery until the very end is utterly stunning.
Gallows Court is set in London during the 1930s, the Golden Age of detective fiction, but the author's elegant prose carries a glaze of stylish Victorian era ambiance with some atmospheric gothic noir thrown in ... There's atmosphere aplenty in this book, sinister undertones slither throughout ... The author has sprinkled in enough iconic Golden Age images to satisfy the most enthusiastic 1930s era fans ... not a simple plot, but stay with it for the payoff. Everything comes together in perfect accord ... This is a book for readers who prefer to see bodies on the page. Murders, assaults, false and forced suicides, blood and dismemberment, corruption, depravity—it's all there. Martin Edwards crafts vivid descriptions of both character and setting that embed the reader into the scene in a way few writers can achieve.
... a thriller of the first order. As the bodies pile up, readers are taken on a cyclonic ride full of red herrings and finely honed characters .... Readers will be enthralled by this first installment of what promises to be a fascinating series.
... marks an intriguing change of direction, paying homage to the legacy of vintage thrillers but introducing an urgency and sense of dark menace that is notably contemporary ... Packed with evocative period detail, twists and turns and a fascinatingly enigmatic anti-heroine.
... exceptional ... The labyrinthine plot is one of Edwards’s best, and he does a masterly job of maintaining suspense, besides getting the reader to invest in the fate of the two main characters. Fans of Edgar Wallace’s classic Four Just Men won’t want to miss this one.
