Funnyman Ben Elton is back, and up to his old tricks, in this anti-war novel. He has dusted off some of his former characters, given them new names, and set them loose to weave their idiosyncratic magic among the pages. The First Casualty could easily be re-titled Blackadder Meets The
Thin Blue Line.
Set for the most part in the fields of Flanders during the battle of Passchendaele, The First Casualty explores the horror and stupidity of war. Elton uses this setting as the backdrop for a farcical murder investigation — a conscientous objector, police inspector Douglas Kingsley, is propelled into the action against his wishes, to find out who has killed poet and top soldier Viscount Abercrombie.
Kingsley, under the alias of Christopher Marlowe, rails against the war, trotting out canned cliches quicker than Elton can type them. Unfortunately, there is something quite pitiful about Kingsley's characterisation: he is spectacularly methodical and predictable, utterly moral and righteous, a total bore.
Once Kingsley is despatched to The Front, we bear witness to all manner of atrocities: death and carnage on one hand, Elton's story-telling on the other. Here we meet an unholy collection of misfits — there is good old Captain Edmonds and his trusty imbecilic sidekick, remixed and remodelled straight from Blackadder Goes Forth; the requisite love interest, the odd, sexually ferocious, motorcycle-riding Nurse Murray; and, of course, the sinister, womanising villain, Captain Shannon. Elton is doing little more than painting by numbers.
Trying to decipher what kind of book it is becomes harder than working out the identity of the murderer. The First Casualty suffers because it is unsure of its genre: it is a book trying to do, and be, a great many things. Elton will have his own agendas hidden in the subtext, and one gets the feeling he is using the book, in part, as a vehicle to comment on Britain's involvement in Iraq.
But instead of creating something of genius, he has simply created a weaker, less worthy impersonator. As a result, The First Casualty will surely be Elton himself.
* Bantam Press, $36.95
* Steve Scott is a Hamilton reviewer
