The First Casualty

click here for more details, find new or used items	Ben Elton Our price £4.99 (£7.99) New from £3.49 Used from £0.01 Pages: 419 (Paperback) ISBN: 0552771309 Pub: Black Swan Pub date: 2006-05-03 Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 9323

Reader Reviews:

Mystery not history (0/0 people found this helpful)

I bought this book to read on the beach and it was the perfect holiday read. Ths story carries you along at a good pace and has a good mystery story woven into it. Overall I enjoyed it alot but I only gave it 3 stars for 2 reasons;
1. It lacks description or reasoned thought upon WW1 beyond GCSE history.
2. But more important problem for me is it reads a bit like The Victor Book for Boys with the hero (in Matt Braddock style) dashing backwards and forwards through no man's land and never being hit by a bullet.
Peter

stunning.... (0/0 people found this helpful)

Having read 95% of Eltons novels I was expecting great things from this one. I was not disappointed. I read it on holiday - I couldn't put it down and after I finished it it stayed with me for days afterwards. The man is so learned and so committed to his craft that I am staggered by the time he must have spent in research - and then to translate that into an action packed and emotion filled tale is incredible. Ben, I'm sure you don't need this extra review from me but - you can do no wrong!!

One out of Left Field (0/0 people found this helpful)

Elton usually sticks with satirical novels which comment on the latest cultural obsessions of our frankly odd society. This is nothing like those, and I am grateful, because I don't rate those at all. This is one of those rare personal novels he writes, ones which actually connect at an emotional level. I enjoyed it in much the same way I enjoyed his book Inconceivable, because it is written with real feeling.

This is a WWI novel, set amongst the trenches of the third battle of Ypres in which an-ex policeman, Douglas Kingsley, imprisoned for objecting to the war, is freed in a torturously complex manner by the government and sent to go and look into the murder of a previously celebrated soldier who was one of the most popular advocates of the war effort.

It is fast paced, atmospheric and full of little historical details that allow you to see that Elton has thoroughly researched his topic. It is a good story as long as you ignore the obvious implausibility of the plot and the set battle scenes which, even though Kingsley is meant to be against the war, he conveniently throws himself into with alarming gusto. These jar a little, despite Elton's attempts to give him motives for his actions. The only other thing that grated was the conversation that Kingsley overhears on the troop train about the origins of the war. It rather reminded me of one of those bits you come across in blockbuster American films where one of the characters asks a blindingly obvious question and the answer is a small speech delivered aside, in which something the screenwriter thinks the audience might not get is trotted out in simple terms.

Otherwise a good, distracting read.

Fantastic (0/0 people found this helpful)

Having read many of Elton's other books, I think this one may be his best. The setting was fantastic with so much historical detail that you could really feel yourself back in the First World War. It also raised some fascinating questions and thoughtful issues. Just great.

Stick to what you do best (0/0 people found this helpful)

I may not like the trendy left winger style of Ben Elton when he gives stand up routine but I normally do like his scripts and books a lot. He is capable of very good stuff. But this book -OH dear! If you know nothing about the first Wold War at all then you may not be put off by it. Otherwise it is so full of innacurate nonesense as to make reading it painful. He still can't help himself with class stereotyping and at any moment I was expecting Major Thatcher to step out of a staff car to bully the poor working class troops over the top. It may have escaped Ben Eltons knowlege that many "toffs" and famous people and their sons also died in the trenches alongside the ordinary man as well It was truely a lost generation and this book does not do them justice. And over the top is what this tripe is. Not withstanding that the "hero" of the book would never have been in the position he found himself in as his protected job would never have permitted him to be called up in the first place. Sorry Ben, I do not know how this book has had so many positive reviews it was very badly researche, the subject matter not at all understood and written by someone who is capable of much more. Stick to what you know best.

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