Armistice

British playwright Stafford (who adapted War Horse for the stage) adds to the growing list of mysteries set during the WWI period with his intricate and moving first novel. Four months after soldier Daniel Case died in no-man’s-land just after the armistice was declared, his fiancée, Philomena Bligh, travels to London, where she seeks out the two key witnesses to the tragedy: Jonathan Priest, who was Daniel’s friend and has returned to his prewar profession as a barrister, and Anthony Dore, who was Daniel’s commanding officer. Instead of gaining any measure of solace, Philomena is tormented almost beyond bearing by hearing from Jonathan that he believed that Anthony, not the Germans, fired the fatal shot, and that the captain did so deliberately. Stafford sensitively portrays Philomena’s solo struggle for the truth in the face of official hostility to her probe as well as her efforts to come to terms with a cruel injustice. (May)