More casualties of war

The Great War continues to destroy lives even after its end in Elizabeth Speller's intriguing 2010 novel The Return of Captain John Emmett.

The title character is already dead when the novel opens in 1920. Emmett returned to England after the war a broken man. He was put in a home for veterans suffering from shell shock. One day he escaped and was later found with a bullet in his head and a gun by his side. His will left much of his money to people whose connection to him is ambiguous. Now his sister, Mary, wants to learn what drove John Emmett to kill himself and why he dispersed his money as he did, and she asks Laurence Bartram, her brother's childhood friend, to help her find some answers.

Laurence, a veteran himself, also leads a life unsettled by the war. He wants to be a writer but cannot focus on his work. So he welcomes the diversion. He also welcomes spending time with Mary, a girl he was drawn to even in his youth. He falls in love with her, yet discovers she hides a mystery of her own.

Aided by his resourceful friend, Charlie, Laurence learns that Emmett had been placed in charge of a firing squad while in France. The man who was executed was an officer who himself was apparently suffering from shell shock. Now other men connected with that execution have been dying under mysterious circumstances. Might Emmett's death have been a murder, not a suicide?

Speller's story is long, deliberate and detailed, yet never dull or filled with confusing complications like so many mysteries. Anyone who enjoys British mysteries should love this one.