Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Problems abound for Verity, the heroine of this book. First, she sounds American, not British. Her rhetoric is gay and charming, despite her widowhood. Her view of the war, despite her employment in Secret Service, seems superficial. She also endures this tedious house party which shows more characteristics of one during the 1930s, not post-Great War. She supposedly speaks three languages, but we never learn how this middle class young girl did that, particularly with a mama who disdained and suppressed her "liveliness." Through discovery of dead bodies and wild rainstorms, she has the extraordinary interest in describing her wardrobe changes with the intricacies of fabric, color and detail to the point of distraction. Then too, speaking of those bodies, she nor any of her house partying companions has any desire to take proper or honorable care of them. They are left in their places of death, murdered as they are, to rot. No one even thinks to cover them, let alone remove them from future view by others. Absurd. Careless of them...the author...and the editors. But the greatest challenge to this historical mystery is that the author knows little about the Somme, trench warfare, medical care of wounded or the conditions of French countryside along the Western Front. The author blithely has her "resurrected husband/hero" explain that he was wounded during a retreat. That his comrades escaped down the communication trench, but he was left behind where he was shot near the heart by one of his own men. He knows not who, never saw him. Discovered by a friend, he was rescued and secretly taken to a nurse. No. Why? He is shot "fives inches" from his heart. And we are to believe in this life-threatening condition his comrade carried him secretly down trenches, hunched over or crawling, under fire and invasion to...where? The only escape was surely down that trench to the first line which would have been populated by the chaos of other escaping soldiers, triage medics and supply chain soldiers, lorries, horses, artillery and more. If our hero's friend was able to get him secretly to a nurse, as is claimed, how and where can she treat him for so serious a wound without being discovered? She is surrounded by other medical personnel whose duty it is to treat all wounded. Would she treat this man in an open field or in back of the field hospital? In a woods? This is so unbelievable as to be impossible. No. There would be no place to hide. Furthermore, she treats him to the point he recovers so that he is well enough to wander the French countryside for months looking for clues to who shot him. Yet, he is listed as dead and the author never explains why authorities would declare him so. And soon after the end of the battle, too. (They have no body, no body parts, no ID tags.) Why would he roam the countryside looking for clues when the one who shot him is in the Army, not the French countryside? Again, how could he survive? Begging, we suppose. But we have no idea if he knows French, knows that particular area nor do we learn how in the world he was able to book passage back to England without papers. Despite all this, I see all the professional reviews for this book praise it. Oh, it is good reading. (Aside from the interminable boredom of the house party.) It's just not accurate history. Nor even believable historical fiction. Why, I wonder can this have such positive reviews? I daresay it is because in America, our history books gloss over the Great War with a few blithe sentences. Trench warfare. Mud, you know? War to end all wars...that wasn't. On to great depression, Hitler and all that more glorious greatest generation stuff. We know so little that an author who has not done her homework can write a mystery which offers nice characterizations, but little verisimilitude. And we buy it. To our despair and our poor understanding of the past. What is the purpose of writing historical fiction if not to edify and, if possible, to inform? Sadly, here no one has done readers any service. This novel is fiction, but it is fantasy.