by Elizabeth Speller
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012. 442 pgs. Mystery
Devastated by his experiences in the war, and the deaths of his wife and infant son in his absence, Laurence Bartram comes home to England with little interest in resuming his teaching and writing careers. But when Mary Emmett, sister of an acquaintance from his school days, asks him to look into why her brother might have killed himself he agrees because he so much admired John Emmett and because he remembers Mary with a greater affection than just fondness. What seems to be a simple inquiry becomes increasingly complicated as Captain Emmett's participation on a firing squad leads Laurence and his friend Charles to the almost ritualistic deaths of other participants. Along with the mystery, what gradually and richly emerges from these pages is a picture of the horror wrought by World War I--so many lives physically, spiritually, and emotionally destroyed on the homefront as well as on the fields of battle. Speller's prose is subtle, evocative, spot-on. In her bibliography of sources she lists Paul Fussell's masterful The Great War and Modern Memory, and her novel reflects richly the spirit of that great work. Readers of Charles Todd's Inspector Ian Rutledge mysteries should enjoy this book as well.
LW
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