The Return Of Captain John Emmett
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- €3.99
Publisher Description
1920. The Great War has been over for two years, and it has left a very different world from the Edwardian certainties of 1914.
Following the death of his wife and baby and his experiences on the Western Front, Laurence Bartram has become something of a recluse. Yet death and the aftermath of the conflict continue to cast a pall over peacetime England, and when a young woman he once knew persuades him to look into events that apparently led her brother, John Emmett, to kill himself, Laurence is forced to revisit the darkest parts of the war. As Laurence unravels the connections between Captain Emmett's suicide, a group of war poets, a bitter regimental feud and a hidden love affair, more disquieting deaths are exposed. Even at the moment Laurence begins to live again, it dawns on him that nothing is as it seems, and that even those closest to him have their secrets . . .
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Londoner Laurence Bartram, three years after coming home from WWI a shell of his former self, starts to reawaken at the outset of this moving mystery debut from British classics scholar Speller (Following Hadrian). The young widower begins probing the apparent suicide of fellow veteran John Emmett whom he remembers most vividly as a fearless schoolboy primarily as an excuse to see Emmett's fetching sister, Mary. But as Bartram and his intrepid friend, Charles Carfax, uncover Emmett's role in the execution of a "boy officer" court-martialed for desertion as well as discover how many others involved have subsequently met with suspicious ends the investigation becomes compelling in its own right. It also spurs Bartram to finally confront some hard truths about himself. Though Speller eventually falters with an overreliance on coincidence, for the most part she delivers an elegant, engrossing read.
