Blackstone and the Great War

January 23, 2012
Spencer’s ninth whodunit featuring Scotland Yard’s Insp. Sam Blackstone (after 2010’s Blackstone and the Wolf of Wall Street) offers a gripping look at the horrors of WWI trench warfare. Gen. Sir Michael Fortesque, with whom Blackstone served in the British Army in Afghanistan 30 years earlier, asks the inspector to look into the murder of his grandson, Charles, a lieutenant stationed on the Western Front, since he doesn’t trust the military police to reach the right result. The deck is stacked against Blackstone from the start. Half of the men in Charles’s platoon, including potential witnesses and suspects, have already been killed in battle. Army officials, dismayed by the possibility that a brother officer was the killer, resist giving the inspector a free hand in conducting his inquiries. If the solution is less clever than in the preceding book, Spencer more than makes up for it with rich atmospherics that will appeal to fans of Charles Todd’s Rutledge novels.

April 1, 2012
Trench warfare takes a back seat to class warfare as Scotland Yard Inspector Blackstone (Blackstone and the Wolf of Wall Street, 2010, etc.) tracks a murderer. In Afghanistan, many years earlier, Sam Blackstone and General Sir Michael Fortesque had been comrades in arms. Despite cast-iron class barriers, they had admired and respected each other and contributed to each other's survival. A quarter of a century later, Sam responds at once to the General's call for help. Lt. Charles Fortesque, his only grandson, has just met death on the Western Front, he tells Sam, then adds, unsettlingly, that he wants Sam to find the killer. He's convinced of murder most foul and adamant that no one is better equipped than Sam to furnish desperately needed answers. Reluctantly, Sam signs on and ships over to France, where he discovers how remarkably little has happened in the way of social progress. The army's officers unabashedly view themselves as demigods and enlisted men as scarcely human, both conditions obviously immutable. How dare Sam suggest that an officer, any officer, could be crass enough to betray his class in so homicidal a manner, demands an outraged company commander. To which an unflappable Sam replies that "officers are as likely to commit murder as anybody else, and they'll swing from a rope as well as the next man." Another solid effort from Spencer. It's great fun to watch the thorny Inspector sass the fatuousness out of snobbery.

COPYRIGHT(2012) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

February 15, 2012
It's the height of WWI, and Scotland Yard copper Sam Blackstone is called to the home of his old commanding officer, who wants Blackstone to investigate the murder of his grandson, Charles, a lieutenant serving in France. Although reluctant to take on the mission, Blackstone owes the general for saving his life in the Second Afghan War, so off to France he goes. When he arrives, he's greeted with instant hostility from both officers and troops. But the more the men stonewall him, the more determined Blackstone is to get at the truth. Although he is initially lured down the wrong investigative path by the cunning killer, eventually, with his usual, bulldog-like tenaciousness, he uncovers the unexpected truth. While this is first and foremost an intelligent murder mystery featuring the decent, gifted, irascible Blackstone, it is also a story about the brutality of war, the blatant snobbery of the British upper class in the early twentieth century, and the heart-breaking bravery of those who fought in WWI.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)