‘The war was wonderful, thieving wise, gangster wise, for everything …I’ll never forgive ‘itler for surrendering.’ So said Mad Frankie Fraser, thug, killer and longtime associate of the Richardsons and the Krays and other infamous members of the London underworld. Many people believe that crime took a holiday in World War 2 – that in a display of solidarity with the embattled country, patriotic criminals took things easy. Nothing could be further from the truth. The war was a boom time for crime, and for London’s crooks in particular. They took full advantage of the criminal opportunities afforded by the blackout, the chaos of the Blitz, and the loss of many experienced Metropolitan police officers to the armed forces. Not only did traditional offences against the person and property proliferate, but the war brought with it a host of lucrative new criminal activities. The introduction of rationing for food, clothing and petrol created huge scope for forgery and corruption. A thriving black market developed and the gangs made the most of this and the many other inventive scams to which wartime conditions gave rise. Gangland pimps – mostly crooks from Malta – also did spectacularly well out of the war. As growing hordes of leave-taking British and Allied servicemen swarmed into night-time London throughout the war, the Piccadilly Commandos, as the wartime prostitutes were known, had a bonanza.
I became fascinated with the war at an early age. My father served in the Navy and my mother worked for the Great Western Railway in South Wales and London. From them I heard horrific tales of bombs, fires, destruction and doodlebugs, alongside happier ones of singalongs in blacked out pubs, jitterbugging in dance-halls and the many other ordinary day to day pleasures enjoyed as people did their best to carry on as normal. When I decided after a career in business to try my hand at writing historical crime fiction, I found my period chose itself.
To date I have written four stories about wartime Scotland Yard detective, DCI Frank Merlin. Three have been published and the fourth, Death in Mayfair, is due out later this year. The first in the series takes place in January 1940, and the action of the subsequent books has followed at 6 to 9 month intervals. In the new one Merlin has reached December 1941. The time setting of further books will follow at similar pace, so the next story will take place in the summer of 1942. The plan is to take the series all the way through to the end of the war in 1945.
DCI Merlin’s adventures to date have included the investigation of deaths in Joe Kennedy’s American Embassy (Princes Gate), the murder of an RAF Polish pilot during the Battle of Britain (Stalin’s Gold), and treachery and espionage among De Gaulle’s Free French (Merlin At War). In the latest book, Death in Mayfair, Merlin and his team investigate the violent deaths of two women against a background of the wartime film industry and the London vice rackets.
If you’d like to know more about the Frank Merlin series please visit my website at markellisauthor.com
Mark Ellis is published by Accent Press
