Excellent. Very fair to those who fought and those who didn’t ( )

This is a good but very sad story.

Set in 1917 Respected Policeman and Conscientious objector Douglas Kingsley is sent to Prison for refusing to fight in World War 1. He gets a nasty kicking on his first night. His Wife disowns him and he ends up in the Prison hospital. He is a brave but very stubborn man for sticking to his beliefs. He is helped to escape from jail on one condition he goes over to Belgium to investigate the Murder of Viscount Abercrombie whose Father has significant influence with the UK Government.
Kingsley's death is faked and he is given a new identity, he has to report to a hideous man called Captain Shannon who is some sort of spy.
Kingsley makes it over to the Trenches were he encounters some horrible conditions, he quickly discovers what has happened, a cover up by the Army. Along with a nice Nurse called Kitty Murray he concludes his investigation. He does see active service after all and has to kill some Germans to rescue some British troops from the trenches.
Kingsley discovers the real Killer is Shannon.
Kingsley can go home to London but he has to take on his Dead brothers identity and then he reunites with his wife.

Very good book and it enables you to imagine how horrible the Trenches must have been. ( )

Captivating ( )

“One thing we’ve learned is that when people, especially politicians, start making decisions based on a reading of their moral compass, facts tend to be among the first casualties.”
― Steven D. Levitt, Think Like a Freak

Douglas Kingsley is a top police detective sentenced to jail for refusing to fight during WWI. Viscount Abercrombie, an aristocratic poet and war hero is found murdered in France. Kingsley is sent to France to find the truth behind the murder. Kingsley quickly realises that the main suspect, a shell-shocked soldier, is innocent. Kingsley finds himself caught in the world between the sanctioned murder of war and the illegal act of homicide.

In this novel Ben Elton revisits the trenches of WWI that he portrayed so hilariously with Blackadder and this is very different than any of his novels other that I've read in the past. The plot is pretty preposterous as even Kingsley thinks himself, why would any care about one death when thousands are dying on a daily basis? The introduction of historical background of suffragettes, the rise of Labour and Irish independence feel rather cliched IMHO.However it is worth persevering with because once Kingsley gets to the front line, the book moves onto a different plane and the main character becomes less facetious finally taking on real human dimensions.

There is no real mystery in who committed the dastardly crime and the ending is a little too neat
for my liking but that said whilst Elton is no Faulks for about 100 pages he manages to fill the reader with a real sense of the horror and misery that those real life combatants must have felt. As such it is a reasonable effort and worth a go. ( )

Set during World War I in Flanders in June of 1917 this book is dedicated to Ben Elton's two grandfathers who fought on opposite sides during the War. Whilst recovering from shell shock inside a military hospital, popular war poet and soldier Viscount Abercrombie is shot dead. Meanwhile, Douglas Kingsley, Scotland Yard Inspector, refuses national service as the war itself defies his sense of logic. He's brought before a judge, branded a coward and his wife Agnes and their friends turn their back on him. Once he's thrown into prison he is assaulted by his fellow inmates, many of whom he put behind bars in the first place and who plot to kill him. After a particularly violent assault the Home Office abduct him and fake his death then send him to investigate the Viscount's murder behind the front lines at Flanders. Accompanying him is Captain Shannon, whom Kingsley quickly discovers is a psychopath. The investigation reveals that not only was Abercrombie a homosexual, but that he was also disillusioned with the war and writing poetry that expressed this in the same way that disillusioned war poet Siegfried Sassoon did.

The title refers to the famous quote; 'The first casualty of war is truth' and it's quite apt. A good read, takes a while to get you to the front line, but I thought it was well done. ( )