The Year After by Martin Davies, Hodder &Stoughton, $32.99.
It’s 1919 and, still grimy with Flanders dust, Captain Tom Abbott returns to a strangely muted London.
Before the war, he’d vowed never to return to Devon and rose-scented Hannesford Court, the home of the charming Stansbury family.
Yet a yearning for music, noise and bustle draws him back. Life there before the war seemed golden, but was it really? And was there more to the two deaths on the estate than anyone knew?
The Year After is a country house mystery with historical and emotional depth.
Tom and the Stansbury’s poor cousin Anne Gregory, lead us through the dramas of a family whose careless arrogance and easy charm play havoc with each other’s lives, and those of their guests.
Martin Davies cleverly creates many Hannesford Courts; the one seen by innocent Tom and Anne in 1914, the one they re-examine from the perspective of 1919, and the Hannesford Court left in the wake of World War I.
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