Blackstone and the Great War: An Inspector Sam Blackstone Mystery

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. (Mar.)