Inspector West kicks off

An enjoyable, if not very deep, crime novel by John Creasey. Inspector West investigates the death of a man and this leads him down a rabbit hole involving a mass conspiracy to steal food (when this book was released, 1949, food rationing was still going on in the UK so that probably resonated) and re-sell it on the black market.

The criminal gang use specially printed football programmes with codes embedded in them, to distribute at football grounds to the various members in the greater conspiracy. To be honest this seems a bit of a odd way to do this, though obviously this book was written a long time before WhatsApp!

West gets into plenty of action here, beaten up a few times and even shot, but he pulls through to brings down the whole criminal enterprise. The murder that took place at the start of the book is also solved, though it did seem to become a bit of an afterthought.

Not a bad story at all, not very challenging but very readable. A couple of the main characters who often are seen acting suspicious, end up being innocent so that is a nice little twist at the end.