Review: Good Historical Fiction
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 11 28, 2012
I just stumbled across "Murder at Zero Hour" while perusing through Amazon's offerings and grabbed it up. After all, it's about World War One for crying out loud. Who writes about WWI anymore? Heck, we've had another world war and several other pretty big ones since then. Well, I for one am glad that Mr. Westwood looked that far back for inspiration and provided us with a glimpse at another place in time.I found the writing to be coherent, the time references to be accurate (to the best of my knowledge, I'm not that old), and the action to be written in a believable and common sense fashion. I especially enjoyed the British colloquialisms, which I don't know how Mr. Westwood would know about without watching way too  much BBC at night.Now for the story: an young American man, recently out of college and working as an engineer, with an English born mother feels compelled to fight for her birth country to prevent its destruction by the German Army; and is also drawn out of his boring existence by the call of the adventure and action that comes along with war. After arriving in England, the young man eventually makes it into officer school for the British Army's stepchild unit (no one else would stoop so low as to take an American, after all). Once that short training period has elapsed, the young American is thrust into the middle of WWI-bayonets, trenches, artillery barages and everything else that goes along with it. During the fighting the man's superior is murdered and he feels compelled to prove that it wasn't the enemy that killed him, and to find out who did kill him and why it happened. The obligatory romance also comes into play and enhances the story quite well.To find out what happens, you'll have to read the book. I found the overall feel of the book to be fun, easy to read, and historically interesting. The murder mystery plot line also kept a firm hold on me as a reader. There's nothing like a good who done it, to create it in the trenches of WWI made for a great story. This is an easy read, meaning that you don't have to sell your soul to the book in order to understand and follow all of the information and characters. As I've said previously, it's written well, but it's also easy to follow. I like that.