First Casualty, Paperback/Ben Elton

Ben Elton's tenth novel is a gut-wrenching historical drama which explores some fundamental questions. Set in 1917 Flanders, where a British officer and celebrated poet, is shot dead, not from enemy gunfire but whilst recuperating from shell shock well behind enemy lines. A former detective and conscientious objector is assigned the task of going to France to find the killer but the evidence and the witnesses are quite literally disappearing into the mud that surrounds him.