Demons Walk Among Us

Two investigations preoccupy Capt. Thomas Oscendale of the British Military Foot Police in Hicks’s grim second WWI historical (after The Dead of Mametz). While on leave in Wales in August 1917, Oscendale meets a lovely widow, Mrs. Hannah Graham, and meanwhile is drawn into a gruesome local murder case by former police colleague and friend Insp. Corrick Woodfin. He also begins getting indications that Maj. Edmund Lucas, with whom he fought in Gallipoli in 1915, may not be worthy of the commendations that Lucas received, and may, in fact, be responsible for the deaths of fellow soldiers. Hicks doesn’t stint in his portrayal of the horrors of war—both in terms of the carnage and the mental anguish that troops suffer in battle. This isn’t a whodunit but an exploration of the evil of which men, individually and collectively, are capable. Readers searching for painfully realistic accounts of wartime crimes won’t be disappointed. (Dec.)