I found this slightly-battered paperback at a local Annie's Book Stop. I'd read many of Perry's "Monk" and "Pitt" series, but hadn't seen this WWI-era one before. It introduces brothers Joseph and Matthew, the former a professor at Cambridge and the latter working for British Intelligence. Their father had contacted Matthew about a high-level conspiracy - but had been killed, along with his wife, in an automobile accident before he could bring the proof to his son. Now Matthew and Joseph each have to try and find out whether their parents' deaths were accidental - and must also deal with the growing rumors of war.

Joseph is a retiring sort, unwilling to get involved, but when one of his star students is found dead of a gunshot wound to the head, with no gun in evidence, he has his own mystery to solve - and as the dead youth was an ardent pacifist at a time when that was considered cowardice by most people (including his own family), Joseph wonders if that death has anything to do with the conspiracy...

Things get quite tangled here, and I admit I found the pacing rather slow - and the solution to the various mysteries a bit less than convincing. But the mood of a country being unwillingly brought to the brink of war was suitably unsettling.

I plan to leave this book at the Dunkin Donuts at 412 S. Main St. at around 2:30 or so; hope the finder enjoys it!

[See other recent releases in New Hampshire here.]