Two Storm Wood

April 12, 2021
Set largely in northern France a few months after the end of WWI, this uneven historical from British author Gray (Zoia's Gold, writing as Philip Sington) follows an affluent English woman on a quest to find her fiancé, who went missing in action and is presumed dead. Amy Vanneck, who made a promise to choirmaster turned reluctant soldier Edward Haslam that she would bring him (or his body) home, travels to the trenches where Haslam was last seen in search of her lover. With British troops scouring the area attempting to identify the thousands of scattered corpses, Amy enters a virtual hell scape of death and destruction, where she discovers that her missing fiancé was somehow connected to the murders of 13 men, all Chinese laborers. Flashbacks to the war heighten the tension, and the mystery of Haslam's whereabouts remains tantalizingly unclear until the very end. But the central character—a sheltered woman who witnesses and experiences numerous atrocities alone—strains the boundaries of believability, as does the unnecessary closing twist. Thriller fans will be disappointed. Agent: Nicola Barr, Bent Agency.

April 15, 2021
British author Gray lays bare the horrors of World War I through an Englishwoman's battlefield search for her fiance. Before the war, music teacher Edward Haslam and Amy Vanneck fall in love and become secretly engaged, although he is beneath her class, socially a nobody. He hates war, which "poisons everything that it does not destroy," yet he answers England's call and becomes a captain of the Seventh Manchesters. Of course, the lovers exchange letters. Then, in early 1919, when the war is newly over, English soldiers must scour the battlefields of northern France to identify rat-eaten corpses and properly bury them. It's a gruesome, smelly, necessary task. Edward is among the missing, and Amy decides to travel to France to search for him on her own, well aware that he is most likely dead. In a hospital, a wounded soldier tells her to "look for your damned sweetheart" under Two Storm Wood. That's the label on army maps for a former German stronghold, under which lies a vast network of tunnels packed with explosives and teeming with rats. The army dismisses rumors that deserters are hiding there and that someone may have murdered a group of noncombatant Chinese laborers. There's no hint of irony here: only horror at the possibility of murder while surrounded by nations' organized killings. Amy is determined to know Edward's fate for better or worse. This, to her, is what it means to be in love--to find her man dead or alive, deserter or not. But there are those who don't want her to know a dark secret about Two Storm Wood, and they are willing to kill. Combat creates Edward's dramatic arc from "the lover, the music teacher" to "the expert close-quarter killer" who sneaks up to enemy trenches and slits throats with a knuckle knife. The scenes of death are unsparing in their grimness, but nothing will stop Amy Vanneck. Powerful historical fiction and a testament to war's insanity. Powerful historical fiction and a testament to war's insanity.

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Starred review from July 1, 2021
Just after the end of WWI, Amy Vanneck is notified that her fianc�, Edward, is missing, prompting her to depart Cambridge for the trench-carved Ancre River battlefield, determined to keep her promise not to leave Edward at the front. Her only guidance is a cryptic, possibly delusional, utterance from Edward's shell-shocked platoon mate: she should look at Two Storm Wood. Captain MacKenzie, commander of the volunteer forces recovering the battlefield's fallen soldiers, is shocked when Amy appears, determined to find Edward, dead or alive. Almost simultaneously, Provost Westbrook, formerly of Scotland Yard, arrives on orders from the War Office to investigate the murders of 13 British Army laborers in the trenches at Two Storm Wood. When Westbrook discovers Amy searching the crime scene, he agrees to let her assist in his investigation, if only to eliminate Edward as a victim. Exhumation of the bodies reveals the torture murders of 12 Chinese laborers and their English lieutenant. As they begin a hunt for the killer, he attacks again, and Amy becomes certain that she's being followed by a shadowy horseback figure lurking around Ancre's perpetually foggy battlegrounds. Immersive and eerily atmospheric, Gray's novel delivers vivid historic detail and gripping suspense, aligning more closely with Dan Simmons' Drood (2009) and Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow than to most WWI thrillers.

COPYRIGHT(2021) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.