Leon Garfield's five early novels—Jack Holborn, Devil-in-the-Fog, Smith, Black Jack, and The Drummer Boy—established very clearly the kind of world we associate with Garfield's writing. Since then, he has continued to produce prolifically, but the sense of unity, the sense of direction, seems to have become dissipated. It is not just a question of wanting or expecting him to go on writing as he has done or to write about the same things as before. After all, one doesn't expect each of William Mayne's books, for example, to be the same—in fact, one is surprised and gratified that each new novel is different and unpredictable. Nor does Garfield's later work lack quality—The God Beneath the Sea, The Strange Affair of Adelaide Harris, and The Ghost Downstairs are as fine as anything he has written. But nevertheless, looking back at the work he has produced...