Earlier this year, I returned to the works of long time mystery writer, Anne Perry. I had gotten tired of her earlier series, but there was something about this new work that had caught my eye, and I decided to take this one on.

Set in the harrowing years of World War I, Shoulder the Sky continues the story of the Reavleys, a solidly middle-class English family. In the first book, we had been stricken with the sudden death of the parents, John and Alys, deaths that had turned out to be murders. Now the adult children are struggling along, caught up in the year 1915, and still unraveling the mystery of the Peacemaker.

The eldest, Joseph, is a chaplain in the bloody, filthy trenches of Ypres, doing what he can to help the nameless numbers of soldiers fighting a war that is quickly turning into a stalemate. Brother Matthew is in London serving with the Intelligence services. The youngest child, Judith, has taken on the duties of a VAD -- a Voluntary Aid Dispenser -- driving ambulances and acting as the personal driver for one of the commanding generals, Owen Cullingford. Another daughter, Hannah, is struggling to hold her own small family together while her husband is at sea.

Told mostly through the eyes of Joseph, we get a first hand account of the war between England and Germany, and Joseph's relationships with the men around him. Most intriguing is the one that he has with Sam Weatherall, a major who is running a crew of sappers, men who are digging tunnels towards the German lines, to try and gather intelligence on future attacks. Joseph and Sam have known each other since their days at Cambridge, and they share what few luxuries that they have, hoping that one day soon, they will all get to go home.

The novel opens with the arrival of Eldon Prentice, a brat of a journalist, who is demanding to be taken to the front lines. He makes crass comments about the soldiers, derides a young sapper who has part of his hand taken off by a sniper and accuses him of doing it deliberately, and isn't above using blackmail to get what he wants either. Retrieving bodies after an attack, it's Joseph Reavley finds Prentice dead on the field, head down in a bomb crater. But the writer hasn't been shot -- someone has held him underwater, and everything is pointing towards it being murder, and the killer being someone that Joseph knows. Will the chaplain let it be, or take the route of finding justice, no matter how much it might cost him in mental anguish?

Perry's own viewpoint on pacifism rings throughout the story, but how she does it is what makes the story interesting. She describes the killing fields of Flanders with all of the horrors attached, swarming with the dead, the brutal life in the trenches, filled with disease, sudden attacks, rats, filth and all the rest.

What makes this book work so well is the psychological drama in each of the various characters as they cope with warfare that has become industrialized. Two sequences are particularly wrenching to read -- the gas attacks on the British at Ypres, and the slaughter at Gallipolli. Effective as well is Judith's complicated relationship with General Cullingford -- in the hands of a lesser writer, there would have been a sexual affair, no doubt told in great detail, but Perry doesn't take the easy way out either -- Judith and Cullingford come across as adults, not idiotic teenagers, and that's very refreshing to read.

Those readers who persevere will find this to be rewarding. While the subject matter is certainly grim, and told in language that spares nothing, there are moments when it all fits neatly together. You start to care very much what happens to the characters, and by the end, several truths come home about the nature of friendship and heroism. Perry does this without hyperbole or mawkishness. It's some of the best fiction that I've read about the nature of warfare, and it has me waiting to reading the next book in the series, Angels in the Gloom.

Four stars. Recommended.

Anne Perry's World War One novels:
No Graves As Yet
Shoulder the Sky
Angels in the Gloom
At Some Disputed Barricade
We Shall Not Sleep

Shoulder the Sky
Anne Perry
2004; Ballantine Books, RandomHouse USA
ISBN 0-345-45655-6

This is part of EpiWriMo offered up by our very own kamel622.

Many, many thanks to Arianej the CL in books for being so kind in getting this listed for me. You're the best!


Recommended: Yes