LUKE McCALLIN In Person With Paul

LUKE McCALLIN chats to Paul Burke about his new historical thriller WHERE GOD DOES NOT WALK, Gregor Reinhardt, WWI, Bosnia, inspirational literature.

WHERE GOD DOES NOT WALK: THE WESTERN FRONT, JULY 1918. Gregor Reinhardt is a young lieutenant in a stormtrooper battalion on the Western Front when one of his subordinates is accused of murdering a group of officers, and then subsequently trying to take his own life. Not wanting to believe his friend could have done what he is accused of, Reinhardt begins to investigate. He starts to uncover the outline of a conspiracy at the heart of the German army, a conspiracy aimed at ending the war on the terms of those who have a vested interest in a future for Germany that resembles her past.
The investigation takes him from the devastated front lines of the war, to the rarefied heights of Berlin society, and into the hospitals that treat those men who have been shattered by the stress and strain of the war. Along the way, Reinhardt comes to an awakening of the man he might be. A man freed of dogma, whose eyes have been painfully opened to the corruption and callousness all around him. A man to whom calls to duty, to devotion to the Fatherland and to the Kaiser, ring increasingly hollow...

Luke McCallin was born in 1972 in Oxford, grew up in Africa, went to school around the world and has worked with the United Nations as a humanitarian relief worker and peacekeeper in the Caucasus, the Sahel, and the Balkans. His experiences have driven his writing, in which he explores what happens to normal people - those stricken by conflict, by disaster - put under abnormal pressures. He lives with his wife and two children in an old farmhouse in France in the Jura Mountains. He has a master's degree in political science, speaks French, and can just get by in Russian. When he's not working or writing, he enjoys reading history, playing the drums, and heading into the mountains for a run!

Recommendations:

 In English
Sebastian Faulks: Birdsong
Pat Barker: Regeneration
Jennifer Johnston: How Many Miles to Babylon?
Timothy Findlay: The Wars
Frederic Manning: Her Privates We
The Abolutionist: John Boyne
Sebastian Barry: A Long, Long Way

In French
Roland Dorgelès: Les croix de bois
Henri Barbusse: Le feu
Gabriel Chevallier: La peu
David Diop: Frère d'âme (‘At night all blood is black’ in English)
Jean Amila: Le boucher des Hurlus
Jean Rouaud: Les champs d’honneur
Thierry Bourcy: a series of novels about Célestin Louise, a policeman who joins the French army
Didier Daeninckx: Le der des ders ('A very profitable war' in English, and an excellent graphic novel by Tardy)
Patrick Pecherot: Tranchecaille (a brilliantly-written novel of a murder inquiry told through discordant and unsynchronised flashbacks, and terribly unreliable narrators)
Jean-Christophe Rufin: Le collier rouge (also a film)
Pierre Lemaitre: Au revoir là-haut ('The great swindle' in English: a film, and an excellent graphic novel, and the first novel in a trilogy that takes the reader up to the Second World War)

German
Erich Maria Remarque: All Quiet on the Western Front, and The Way Back
Ernst Junger: Storm of Steel (a memoir, not a novel

Episode produced by Junkyard Dog
Music courtesy of Southgate & Leigh
Crime Time 

Produced by Junkyard Dog
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