After Clare

The absence of vivid characters mars this stand-alone set in 1922 England from Eccles (The Shape of Sand). A wedding brings Emily, Lady Fitzallen, reluctantly home to Leysmorton, the family manor house from which her older sister, Clare, disappeared decades earlier. On the eve of the wedding, the discovery of skeletal remains beneath debris from an old tree house presents a new mystery. The corpse, whose skull is staved in, is identified as Peter Sholto, a private who was believed to have died in combat during the Great War. In fact, Sholto deserted, but his father, eager to avoid humiliation over his cowardice, put out the story that he had gone down fighting. Might Sholto’s murder be linked to Clare’s disappearance? Readers should be prepared for some generic prose (the investigating inspector determines to solve the case, “not just to chalk up one more case solved, but to bring to justice the person who had deprived this young fellow of the right to the life before him”). (Nov.)