The First Casualty

Bantam Press / Transworld publishers, 2005. Fade mark along right hand edge of front of dustjacket, minor foxing at page edges, otherwise good secondhand copy.

In Flanders in June 1917, a British officer and celebrated poet is shot dead, killed not by German fire, but while recuperating from shell shock well behind the lines. A young English soldier is arrested and, although he protests his innocence, charged with his murder. Douglas Konig, formerly a detective with the London police, soon discovers that both the evidence and the witnesses he needs are quite literally disappearing into the mud that surrounds him.