74 Miles Away Book

'There are things we have to fight for'

If you are familiar with Anne Perry's Victorian murder mystery series then it's worth knowing that this book is in quite a different category of fiction, a quantum leap in terms of writing and thought. There's nothing light about this, and it is one of the most profound and rich evocations of the thought world of a certain class in England, 1914.

Set on the brink of war, this is a dense and very detailed read (some might call it slow) in which every psychological nuance of our characters is excavated. Joseph and Matthew Reavley are, respectively, a Cambridge Theology don and a member of the intelligence services - elite, well-educated, the epitome of a kind of class-bound masculinity which is centred on morality and ethical responsibility, not just for themselves but for the whole of the `civilised' world.

Faced with death, perhaps murder, in their close circles, as well as the hovering spectre of a war which will destroy millions, Joseph and Matthew confront all the ambiguities and ambivalences of what it means to be an Englishman (and gender is important in this book) in July and August 1914.

With detailed debates about 'peace-making' vs. appeasement, and questions of what is, and isn't, worth fighting for, as well as meditations on what it does to both a person and a culture when we cross that line and kill, this is deeply thoughtful - though readers wanting a fast-paced crime/mystery might well find it frustrating.

There are moments where Joseph's repeated hand-wringing over his own culpability threaten to tip over into the sentimental, though Perry usually manages to pull it back. Overall, a bleak and emotive read which uses a 'small' story of murder in a Cambridge college to stand-in for the much larger story of violence, bloodshed, revenge and retribution that pulls Europe into the chaos of the First World War.