The Silent House of Sleep by Allan Gaw review: 'riveting, even if it leaves you feeling queasy'

Set during the First World War and in its aftermath, this murder mystery from Allan Gaw makes for compelling reading, writes Allan Massie

Medics tend to a wounded man during the Battle of the Somme, France, 1916 | Historica Graphica Collection/Heritage Images/Getty Images

Allan Gaw is a retired pathologist. After taking early retirement he turned to writing crime fiction featuring a pathologist called Dr Jack Cuthbert. He has published four novels, self-published in small editions of only 500 copies. These have now been taken up by Polygon, who will bring them all out, The Silent House of Sleep being the first of them. It is so good that I am amazed that Dr Gaw didn't immediately find that his first book was snapped up by a commercial publisher. Perhaps he was too modest to try.

The novel consists of two narrative strands, one taking place during the First World War, the other in 1929, by which point Dr Cuthbert has already made a mark as an expert witness in criminal trials. In 1914, however, he is still a medical student at Edinburgh University. Hs closest friend - actually his only close one - is full of patriotic enthusiasm, eager to enlist and believing like so many that the war will be over by Christmas. He does so and is killed.

Cuthbert, desolate and feeling guilty, then enlists, but as a medical orderly serving in the trenches. Accounts of his ghastly experiences there are interwoven with the 1929 passages. At first the connections between the two are not apparent, except for the continuing effect of the war's horrors on Cuthbert. But the connection, one eventually discovers, is there. I make this point because readers who have already read many accounts of the hell of the Western Front may be tempted to skip some of these passages, but by doing so they would miss the connection to crime with which Cuthbert later becomes involved in his professional work.

The account of this case begins in a low key. A young law student disappears. The investigation is somewhat perfunctory. There seems to be neither rhyme nor reason to what has happened. The first Scotland Yard inspector thinks it of little account. There's no corpse, no evidence of foul play, so nothing much to be done.

Allan Gaw | Contributed

Another man mysteriously disappears, but there seems to be no connection between the two cases. Then a grave is discovered in a London Park. Cuthbert is called in. What he discovers is dreadful. There are two bodies in the grave and they seem to be bound together. Indeed one seems to have grown into the other. The account of the pathologist's detailed examination and autopsy is both compelling and disgusting. It rings so horribly true that you feel only a pathologist could have written it. That said, one has to add that the detailed account of Cuthbert's work is riveting, even if it leaves you feeling queasy.

The second inspector who has taken over the case is a rough diamond, at first irritated by Cuthbert and contemptuous of his science. Crime in his experience is a good deal simpler, and you get the feeling that in the sort of case that more usually comes his way, confessions are typically obtained by a bit of rough treatment of the suspect. He is perplexed, then, that at first there is little sign of any likely guilty party, and he gradually begins to recognize that he needs the pathologist if he is to solve the case. At the same time, Cuthbert also begins to develop an unexpected appreciation for the rough Scotland Yard man.

This is a good novel with a strong and ultimately just credible plot. I put it like that because the murderer proves less that wholly convincing, but that of course may be said of many in real life. Here it is the manner rather than the motive of the murder that strains credulity. This doesn't much matter, however, being the case after all with so much of crime fiction. Cuthbert himself is a finely conceived and drawn character: a tall, brusque yet often tender Scot, his feelings for the friend who was killed too early both homoerotic and unspoken. I look forward with some eagerness to forming a better acquaintance with him in the other three novels which Polygon are to publish, and in any subsequent novels Dr Gaw may write.

The Silent House of Sleep by Allan Gaw, Polygon, £9.99