I’ve read previous installments in Giles Ekins’ Inspector Yarrow series, about a facially scarred Yorkshire police detective. I’ve quite liked the previous ones, and I liked this one too – until the ending.

The story of Gallows Road involves a series of unconnected murder investigations in the early 1950s, most of them leading to a legal conviction and a hanging. Each story is heartbreaking in one way or another.

These accounts are interspersed with chapters in the story of a young Yorkshireman who is drafted into the army to be sent to the Korean War. He fights honorably, but is captured with his unit, then subjected to inhuman conditions and torture in the freezing cold of the Korean winter.

This book is not entirely bleak. Back in England, life has its bright moments – Inspector Yarrow marries and has a baby with his new wife. Romance blossoms between two young officers. The author likes to give Dickensian names to some characters, like a lawyer named Mr. Malfeasance.

But the North Korean plot thread finally leads home (erratically; the story isn’t always told in strictly chronological sequence) and culminates in a shattering, horrific climax.

Giles Ekins is a pretty good writer, though sometimes his dialogue can be a little prosy. He does characters well. And that only makes this ending harder to bear.

I honestly can’t recommend Gallows Road, unless you’re looking for motivation to go out and hang yourself.