Review - The Gilded Madonna by Garrick Jones

Clyde returns from a vacation to Melbourne with Harry to find a photo of him and some of his friends from his days in North Africa during World War II delivered to his office. It's the first of several clues that draws Clyde into two seemingly unrelated cases. One is the kidnapping of two children off the street. The other is the re-emergence of a serial killer from Clyde's old days on the police force. It all becomes a tangled web involving child abuse at local orphanages as well as his dead army comrades. Clyde has to unravel it all before more men are killed, and the killer gets him in his sights.

Although private detective mysteries are usually more or less stand-alone stories, there's a huge overlap between this second book of the Clyde Smith Mysteries and the first book. Not only does Clyde's large circle of friends from the first story play a part in this book, but there are also many allusions and tie-ins with the corruption case that was the focus of The Cricketer's Arms. You will also want to heed the content warnings regarding descriptions of child abuse.

As in the first book, the story is related entirely from Clyde's point of view as he tries to decipher the mysterious clues as well as figure out how to make a life with Harry, something that wasn't easily done in 1950s Australia. Clyde displays a bit of a Jeckyl-and-Hyde personality in this volume. It's an intentional way of highlighting how his experiences as a prisoner of war in WWII continue to haunt him many years after being liberated.

Although Clyde and Harry spend a lot of time together trying to figure out to make their relationship work, it's the new detective sergeant at Clyde's old precinct that becomes his main foil. Mark Dioli ends up being one more mystery for the former policeman to solve to help him get to the bottom of things.

“The Gilded Madonna” is available from Smashwords and Amazon (commissionable link).