Aldershot 1945

Sidney Allinson is Canadian news correspondent for Britain’s The Army
Quarterly and Defence. He is the author of The Bantams: The Untold Story
of World War I, Jeremy Kane, and Kruger’s Gold: A Novel of the
Anglo-Boer War.

Aldershot 1945 is a murder mystery with a twist: it’s set in a
Canadian Army camp in England, just after V-E Day.

Lt. Col. Wellesley is shot to death on the same night that his Canadian
troops go on a rampage in the nearby town of Aldershot, Wiltshire.
Detective Chief Inspector Bollock of Scotland Yard and Captain Horobbins
are called in to investigate. What they discover is astonishing.
Wellesley, a senior Canadian Army officer, was involved in the black
market and quite possibly murder. But that’s not all: there are
crooked soldiers on the take in London and vicious black-market
gangsters in newly liberated Holland.

Powe was himself a young soldier stationed overseas in 1945, so it is
small wonder he captures the time and place perfectly—details of army
routine and hierarchy, soldiers’ slang, war-weary Britain, and 1940s
spoken idioms—all bang on. Such authentic details add to the story’s
believability and the reader’s enjoyment, even when the story drags a
bit in the middle.

Powe writes with an admirably terse, no-nonsense style that suits the
story, and his elliptical descriptions keep the reader on alert during
the characters’ conversations and various confrontations. His male
characters, with their typically sardonic army humour, are nicely
counterbalanced by a couple of staunch female CWAC soldiers, who become
embroiled in love and larceny. The mystery keeps you engaged and
guessing to the end, when all is revealed.