A captivating wartime whodunit

The novel revolves around the execution of an officer in France for cowardice and desertion and the rippling effect on the soldiers and families involved. It was inspired, Speller tells us in an author’s note, by the execution of more than 300 British soldiers by firing squad in the Great War. That only three of them were officers raised intriguing questions about class discrepancies.

Finding out what happened to John Emmett and why becomes Laurence Bartram’s mission. Damaged by his experiences at the front, Laurence is an unlikely detective; he lives alone in London, mourning his wife’s death in childbirth. He’s working half-heartedly on a book about local churches when he receives a letter from the sister of a former classmate, John Emmett, who, after fleeing the nursing home where he’d been treated for shell shock, has been found dead - a probable suicide. Mary Emmett asks Laurence to go through John’s effects and investigate his death. “We can’t begin to know what changed him so much in the war. You might,’’ she writes.

Because it’s hard to resist Mary, the object of a schoolboy crush, Laurence tentatively accepts her challenge. He engages his friend Charles as a sidekick, an inspired choice since Charles not only seems related to every lord and lady, every officer and gentleman in London but also can hardly name a country house in whose guestroom he hasn’t unpacked his cufflinks and silk socks. His ebullient sense of adventure and lust for life, even three years after the war, provide a counterpoint to Laurence’s muted emotions. “I was getting bored, you know,’’ Charles confesses when Laurence thanks him for his help.