House of Soldiers

On Tara Hill, near Dublin, is the site where “The House of a Thousand Soldiers” once stood. An archaeologist becomes involved in a project to rebuild “The House of Soldiers” and to repeople it for a day with living images of the soldiers who had once caroused there. But behind the project is a plot and James Maguire soon finds himself in a predicament from which there seems to be no escape.

Andrew Garve’s realism and ingenuity is given full rein in this account of Maguire’s desperate but calculated actions to free himself from the trap.

‘Of all the English writers of detection one of the most original, certainly the most versatile in subject, is Andrew Garve.’ Daily Telegraph

Andrew Garve is the pen name of Paul Winterton (1908-2001). He was born in Leicester and educated at the Hulme Grammar School, Manchester and Purley County School, Surrey, after which he took a degree in Economics at London University. He was on the staff of The Economist for four years, and then worked for fourteen years for the London News Chronicle as reporter, leader writer and foreign correspondent. He was assigned to Moscow from 1942 to 1945, where he was also the correspondent of the BBC’s Overseas Service.

After the war he turned to full-time writing of detective and adventure novels and produced more than forty-five books. His work was serialized, televised, broadcast, filmed and translated into some twenty languages. He is noted for his varied and unusual backgrounds – which have included Russia, newspaper offices, the West Indies, ocean sailing, the Australian outback, politics, mountaineering and forestry – and for never repeating a plot.

Andrew Garve was a founder member and first joint secretary of the Crime Writers’ Association.