Malcolm Forbes has written for the Times Literary Supplement, the Economist and the Wall Street Journal. As Edward reminds us, 'War poisons everything that it does not destroy.' But it is also a thought-provoking drama which routinely strikes a number of serious notes about man's inhumanity and the traumatic effects of conflict.

Throughout it all is a fiendish twofold mystery: What happened to Edward, and who committed the atrocity? There are murky tales of opium addiction and raids on enemy trenches, plus a range of scenes that are thick with atmosphere. Amy's sleuth work - tracking down survivors, sifting testimonies, venturing underground and re-evaluating the man she loves - makes for absorbing reading. It is thoroughly researched and tightly plotted. Gray's novel succeeds on multiple levels. It soon becomes clear, though, that the killing hasn't stopped and that a murderer is still at large. Then her search for Edward takes a different turn when 13 mutilated bodies are located beneath a German strongpoint called Two Storm Wood. James Mackenzie and his band of war-weary, battle-scarred volunteers who are engaged in the grim task of recovering, identifying and laying to rest the many bodies strewn across the ravaged landscape. Such an education might have prepared Amy for the carnage she witnesses on her grisly fact-finding mission. 'A young lady of your station doesn't spend her time cutting up bodies, living or dead,' her mother once told her, thwarting her plan to study medicine. It is a bold move for a well-bred woman, one who, until now, has been forced to lead a sheltered life. Rather than sit around idly waiting for news, she travels to northern France to find out what has become of him and, if necessary, give him a proper burial in a marked grave. Rather than tell a story of war with a soldier at its center, Gray has crafted a historical thriller in which a gutsy heroine goes searching for answers on the empty battlefields of the Western Front.Īmy Vanneck discovers that her fiancé, Captain Edward Haslam of the 7 th Manchesters, is missing in action. However, the book is set predominantly in 1919, several months after hostilities were brought to a close and the Armistice was signed. 'Two Storm Wood' contains the odd flashback to military events during World War I. In contrast, novelists dealing with World War I tend to steer clear of the end of the conflict, preferring instead to focus on the cusp of it and the crumbling of old orders, or the heat of battle and the horrors of trench warfare.īritish writer Philip Gray has done something refreshingly different with his new novel. Many a novel has played out in the dying days or fraught aftermath of World War II, in particular among the rubble and ruins of a vanquished Berlin.

Two storm wood by philip gray