For a very long time, I read Anne Perry's ongoing series of mysteries set in Victorian England. It didn't matter if they were centered around the husband and wife team of Thomas and Charlotte Pitt, or the enigmatic William Monk. But after a while, they started to pale -- after all, the mystery genre fits into a formula of a body is found, an outsider is brought in to find the clues and the people associated with the killing, and eventually justice is served, usually to the delight of the reader who is assured that good will triumph. Read enough of these, and after a time, you can start to pick out what will be happening in the first hundred pages or so. And so, with a sigh of regret on my part, I stopped reading Anne Perry quite so much.

But in 2002 or so, Ms. Perry started a new series of mysteries that are more of historical novel than a set of ongoing whodunits. Set in and around the events of the First World War, and more specifically, one family's survival in the tragedy, there would be a definite beginning and end to the series.

No Graves As Yet is the first novel of the five. It begins in the rich days of June 1914. Joseph Reavley is a teacher at Cambridge University, watching a match of cricket when news arrives of a terrible accident involving his parents, John and Alys, a prosperous middle-class couple. As his siblings gather for the funeral, Joseph realizes along with his brother Matthew that their parents' death may have actually been a murder -- but with little proof, and even less motive, the family has little go on.

Joseph returns to Cambridge, Matthew to London, both of them searching for something to make the horror of the deaths have some kind of sense. Further tragedy awaits Joseph when a brilliant student of his, Sebastian Allard, is found in his room with a bullet in his head, but without any clues or a weapon nearby to suggest who did it. Matthew has plenty of problems of his own -- for he is an intelligence officer, and tensions in Europe are rising with rumors of impending war everywhere. Indeed, war is on everyone's mind, and curiously enough, the death of the Reavleys occurred on the very same day that an Austrian Archduke was assassinated in a Serbian town.

Both Joseph and Matthew find themselves questioning themselves and the unsettled times that they are living in. A great deal of the story is given over to Joseph's desperate melancholy, watching as those he has loved -- his deceased wife, his parents, Sebastian -- all vanish, and his deep psychological torment in reconciling his religious beliefs with a world that is getting ever more confusing. Over it all hangs the mysterious documents that it appears that their father had with him at the time of his death -- a secret that may prevent or accelerate a future war.

What I liked about this one was that Anne Perry carefully weaves in strands of fact in with her fictional Reavley family. Too, she also gives plenty of little details about daily life in England in that hot summer of 1914, from food, automobiles, telephones, mourning customs, to the larger world of the time. I was also able to learn about some of the history of the time that I wasn't aware of, including the military mutiny at the Curragh, and the ongoing troubles of Ireland, then under British rule; the Suffragette movement to get women the vote, and the subtler tangles of adultery, pride, and the ruthless class structure of the time.

The downside is that the novel is glacially paced through the first half of the story. I know that the author is laying down the groundwork for the next four books, and introducing the reader to the Reavley family, but it was very hard going and I was wondering if I should bother with the rest of the series. However, once I got past that halfway point, the story picked up the pace, and the plot starts to come together, building up to a conclusion that breaks at the start of the war, and Britain declares war on Germany.

There are quite a few plot lines in this to be untangled, but for the careful, persevering reader, the story has a great deal of depth and insight. Red herrings wiggle through here and there, but I also liked that Perry takes the time to let the investigation develop, having it spread out over two months, instead of having it be solved in a matter of days, allowing us to watch the three Reavley siblings questioning themselves and the world around them to great effect.

Recommended, with four stars. I'll be certain to check out the next book in the series, Shoulder the Sky.

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

This is my review #31 in CopeSullivan's Fifty Reviews by Halloween Write-Off. Find out more by clicking here.

No Graves As Yet
Anne Perry
2003; Ballantine Books
ISBN 0-345-45653-X



Recommended: Yes