At Some Disputed Barricade

January 29, 2007
Fans of the first three books in this WWI series from Perry, best known for her Victorian police procedurals, will eagerly pick up this fourth volume to learn more of the ongoing saga of the three Reavley siblings: Joseph, a chaplain working with soldiers on the front line in France; Matthew, a British intelligence officer; and Judith, an ambulance driver. (Newcomers may struggle to understand the backstory.) Matthew continues his search for the traitorous mastermind—the "Peacemaker"—plotting to align Britain with Germany to end the war, while Joseph is working on a smaller mystery: was British officer Howard Northrop killed by one of his own men? Exposition slows down the pace in places, but the author vividly captures the unspeakable horrors of the Great War. Readers won't have long to wait for the fifth and final entry in the series, We Shall Not Sleep
(Reviews, Feb. 5).

January 1, 2007
The fourth entry in Perry's World War I series finds chaplain Joseph Reavley three years into his service in the trenches of Ypres on the western front. The British army has suffered appalling losses, and the men are exhausted, hungry, and afraid. Now an incompetent officer, the son of a general, unwilling to take advice from more experienced soldiers, is sending his men to certain death by making wrongheaded, uninformed decisions. When the officer's body is discovered, it falls to Joseph to determine whether he was killed by his own men. The investigation is complicated when Joseph's sister, Judith, a fearless ambulance driver, is drawn into the dispute. Meanwhile, their brother, Matthew, who works for British intelligence, is seeing indications of the work of the Peacemaker, who, under the guise of seeking an end to the conflict, is sabotaging Britain's war effort. Perry explores the shifting nature of loyalty, conscience, and honor when set against the backdrop of a blood-soaked battlefield, and her grisly descriptions of that battlefield are heartrending.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2007, American Library Association.)