Instrument Of Slaughter By Edward Marston

(Home Front Detective # 2)
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January 1916. Britain is on the brink of enforcing conscription. Cyril Ablatt, leader of Shoreditch s group of conscientious objectors, makes a rousing speech at a meeting of the No-Conscription Fellowship, refusing to be 'an instrument of slaughter in a khaki uniform'.
When Cyril is brutally bludgeoned to death, Inspector Harvey Marmion and Sergeant Joe Keedy are assigned to the case. But public sympathy is lukewarm: some claim that those who won't fight for King and Country deserve to die. Marmion and Keedy will have to work fast to find the killer before any more deaths occur . . .