The First Casualty - Ben Elton

The First Casualty – Ben Elton ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Firstly, a confession. I didn’t mean to buy this book; I wanted the Elton book about the reality TV show (Dead Famous) and picked this up by mistake and didn’t realise the error until I started reading the first pages. I mention this because one of the joys of reading is the anticipation you feel before starting a new book and realising this wasn’t the book I wanted set me back and may have influenced my thoughts of it, particularly in the first few days of reading. Ben Elton doesn’t really need much of an introduction as one of the things he is most famous for is how prolific ...  Read the complete review

When I think of famous people that I dislike, Ben Elton is very high on my list. Once a bastion of anti-Thatcher working class humour he has sold out so badly that he now represents everything that is wrong with New Labour's horribly false façade. You get the feeling that if you shook his hand, you may just lose your watch. No matter how much I hate the man it seems that he finds success and money in everything he does from comedy, books, film and theatre – yuck! What makes me even sadder is I thought his earlier books such as ‘Gridlocked’ and ‘Stark’ were fantastic slices of funny fiction. Over the years as he grew increasingly unbearable; so did his books with the ...  Read the complete review

For my money, Ben Elton has a bit of a mixed record when it comes to books. Some are excellent, others readable and some really quite poor. The First Casualty definitely belongs in the first category. It centres on Inspector Kingsley, a police officer and conscientious objector, who suddenly finds himself investigating a murder in the trenches of the Great War in 1917. Despite this fairly standard sounding plot summary, though, it's not a conventional murder-mystery book, offering far more than just a straight forward whodunit plotline. There's commentary on the First World War, an array of interesting and very human characters, humour, action, and, of course, ...  Read the complete review

Ben Elton normally writes a story in a very witty way with a serious important message behind it. The First Casualty is an exception to this rule. Not that there isn't an important message behind the writing. Quite the opposite, in fact. But this time Ben Elton isn't writing for laughs. This is a serious book from start to finish - the only humour contained in it's pages is gallows humour. The main protagonist is anti war and is arrested for his refusal to participate. However he gets a chance of redemption when he is given the opportunity to investigate a murder case. The twist is that the man who is accused of the crime faces the death penalty. However, if he ...  Read the complete review

Ben Elton writes topical thrillers with a message: be it the environment, oil industry, celebrity cult or legalisation of drugs, there is always some underlying theme or idea that is explored. 'First Casualty' seems to be the most ambitious and the least 'of the moment' so far. It is set during the Great War and the theme it explores, is, suitably, the moral conundrums surrounding the war and the anti-war stance taken by the novel's main protagonist, Douglas Kingsley. Kingsley is a conscientious objector, but not a pacifist: he simply (?) thinks THIS war is stupid and illogical. Apart from that he is a police inspector and a man whose skills are ...  Read the complete review