Description

THE GUNS ARE SILENT. THE DEAD ARE NOT

‘The world has been waiting for a worthy successor to Sebastian Faulks’ Birdsong – now Philip Gray has delivered it’ David Young, author of Stasi Child.

1919. On the battlefields of northern France, the guns of the Great War are silent. Special battalions now face the task of gathering up the dead for mass burial.

Amy Vanneck’s fiance is one soldier lost amongst many. She heads to France, determined to discover what became of the man she loved.

Meanwhile, Captain Mackenzie cannot bring himself to go home until his fallen comrades are laid to rest. His task is upended when a gruesome discovery is made beneath the ruins of a German strongpoint.

It soon becomes clear that what Mackenzie has uncovered is a war crime of inhuman savagery. As the dark truth leaches out, both he and Amy are drawn into the hunt for a psychopath, one for whom the atrocity at Two Storm Wood is not an end, but a beginning.

*Longlisted for the 2023 CWA Historical Dagger Award*

‘An atmospheric portrayal of the pity of the war’ The Times, Books of the Year

Publisher Review

Although the novel is deftly plotted and the atmosphere all distorting fog and claustrophobic dugouts, its achievement lies in Gray's finely worked portraits of the pity of war - those damaged by conflict and those who have to deal with its mind-altering consequences. * The Times * Through a clever series of plot twists...Gray leads...his readers to the unexpected truth -- Nick Rennison * Sunday Times * Two Storm Wood is an impressive achievement. It sheds a powerful light on a neglected aspect of World War One history. I can't recommend it enough. * Alan Parks, author of Bloody January * I couldn't put this down. A thriller and romance set amidst the post-Armistice battlefields and the damaged people trying to do right by the dead. Extraordinary setting, great characters, bursting with ideas. * Dominick Donald, author of Breathe * Two Storm Wood has the literary class, intellectual depth, and thriller pacing of Robert Harris at his best--with an added spine-tingling aura of menace worthy of Stephen King. It's the most chilling portrayal of a historical period since Philip Kerr's novels of Nazi Berlin, yet at its core Gray's masterpiece is a heart-rending story of sacrifice, love and loyalty overcoming the psychological tortures of the World War I battlefields. * Matt Rees, author of Mozart's Last Aria *