Copper Script

Copper Script (2025) K.J. Charles

Set in London in 1924

Aaron Fowler likes being a detective, likes working for the cause of justice. What he doesn’t much like is how the Met refuses to acknowledge the existence of bad coppers. He also doesn’t much care for his cousin, who expects him to fix his problems, currently being dumped by his fiancee after her visit to a graphologist. Aaron doesn’t want to help Paul, but he also doesn’t like people taking advantage.

The world after the war was populated by people who were desperate to believe in something, or anything.

Joel Wildsmith lost a hand in the war, and since returning has been working as best he can to make ends meet. Which for him means using his talent in graphology, even if he doesn’t quite understand how he knows the things he learns.

Highlight: quite right that he had no qualifications and no proof that he could do what he claimed. Joel’s only defence was the fact that he could do it.

When Aaron consults Wildsmith, he doesn’t know what to believe, or how the man could know the things he did about those who wrote the papers he showed the graphologist.

Not a romantic husband, I wouldn’t think, but a useful one. How can I put this: I bet he’s never bought his wife flowers in his life, but he’d happily dig her a rose bed if she wanted one.”

I really liked Joel. I’d just reread the Sins of the City series, and was expecting another charlatan like Justin, but instead got an honorable man doing what he could to make he way.

He hadn’t served in a war for people to go around not offering other people tea.

As with so many KJ Charles books, I not only loved the story (mystery) and the characters, but also the history.

Joel had spent a year or more fighting to get the hook. The Ministry for Pensions had made things entirely clear in their literature at the end of the war. “You are going back to ordinary civil life,” the leaflet had said, “and it is up to you to make yourself as fit for that work as possible.”

It was the perfect story to pull me out of my rereads only slump.

Characters: Detective Sergeant Aaron Fowler, Mr. Joel Wildsmith, Paul Napier-Fox, Miss Barbara Wilson, DC Helen Challice, Sergeant Hollis, Constable James Sefton, Divisional Detective Inspector Colthorne, Detective Inspector Davis, Rahim Mohammed, Angelo, Mr. Gerald Marks, Mrs. Trotter, Darby Sabini, Mr. Twigg

Rating: 8.5/10

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