Nowhere near as mind-blowingly awesome as Elton's Blackadder Goes Fourth, The First Casualty remains an interesting addition to the field of contemporary WWI fiction.

Part murder mystery, part thinly veiled Siegfried Sassoon (or is it Wilfred Owen?) lovefest, The First Casualty takes a conscientious objector, Inspector Douglas Kingsley of Scotland Yard, and plunks him down in Flanders to investigate the murder of a famous poet-soldier-anti-war agitator.

The book is slick (but maybe a little too slick), the characters fit their time and setting well (but maybe a little too well), and the mystery is about what one would expect (and those suspicions come a little too easily). Still, there are some flourishes that make The First Casualty well worth the time, especially if you're interested in modern takes on WWI.

And since Mr. Elton is an accomplished television writer, I don't feel I am out of line to suggest that this book would probably be better on the small screen than as a novel. I can picture a three episode BBC series that would easily trump the novel given the right cast, locations and direction. What a shame it hasn't been adapted.

One little complaint that has nothing to do with Mr. Elton: do we need anymore poppies on the covers of WWI novels? As a pseudo-Canadian who has to listen to John McCrae's sickening In Flanders Fields every year on Rememberance Day, I can do without poppies, unless they are in the morphine for my most recent surgery. Mud, decay, and poisoned lungs are much more appropriate symbols of the Great War.

This was an interesting novel largely because of its First World War setting. Elton evokes the detail of the trenches, and the massive undertaking involved in the organisation of millions of men on the Western Front very convincingly. The research is accurate and, indeed, the setting was what I enjoyed most. The plot, however, at times verged upon the ridiculous. The central character, a policeman and conscientious objector who, ironically, as a consequence of his own moral decisions, finds himself in the thick of the Third Battle of Ypres. He is neither hero or anti-hero and, in fact, is incredibly annoying and intensely patronising in his thoughts to just about every character. By far the most interesting figure is the Suffragette nurse, but he even manages to give her feisty self-agency a good pat on the head. I'm sure she would have found the ending unbearable, as do I. I would call this a journalistic rather than a literary novel.

I have a question for Ben Elton. Genuinely, was this actually meant to be a parody or was I actually meant to take half of this absolutely farcical depiction of war seriously?

It only lacked Blackadder and Baldrick

So many unbelievable cliches, characters who are everybodies presumed idea of Irish, Welsh, upper class toffs and lower class types- Lloyd George must have said 'Boyo more on two pages than he ever did in his life.
If Blackadder had popped up it wouldn't have surprised me - stick to the day job Elton.