Farrago & Farrago edition, published 1996.

BLURB There was no direct evidence that Royle had been forced to kill three young men of his own age, and the police had credited them to his murderous ex-employer anyway. Then Albert Brewer, brother of one of the violators turned victim, came out of prison and into money from his last job. Brewer shared information that was not available to the police with George Markham, the father of another of the trio. Royle was a loose end.     Brewer knew that Royle and Markham's son had both worked for the same organization as small-time cocaine smugglers. Another man had died while proving that Royle was armed and dangerous to know. A web of circumstance tightened around him. The killer of Albert Brewer's brother had to die too as a matter of honour.     Markham, under threat from a blackmailer, was also looking for permanent solutions to his problems. Six months earlier, others had been trying to reschedule Royle's incarnation, as his assassin friend Robert Parker put it. He was in the same trouble again... Produced by Romiley Literary Circle in association with Romiley Arts Federation © Henry Smith, 1984. This edition © Henry Smith, 2004. By The Same Author Sergeant Enterprise Major Achievements Merchant Submarine The Necessary Peace * [A Desert Hotel] Doppelgänger Death Is A Stranger Death On The Record Death From High Ground Something In The Blood ** Allah's Thunder * published abridged in the USA and Canada as The Last Campaign ** written with L. Gordon Range This is the second volume of a sequence which began in the early 1980s and reached volume 5 in the early 2000s. The occasional nature of the books has created the interesting distortion of a story spread over two or three years of 'story' time set against a background of the changing technology and attitudes of a couple of decades. The gap between Death Is A Stranger and Death In Small Corners is quite a small one, a matter of a few months of 'story time; and a year or two or 'real time'.    No doubt the author could rework the sequence to position it in a particular decade of the 20th or 21st Century, but he has too much else to do and he can't be bothered. "Let the reader quibble if the discontinuities upset him", Mr. Smith says, "but don't expect me to take any notice."

Map of Shepford area

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