Rating: 
Summary: Bury this book in the grave...
Review: after all the Monk/Pitt books I have read - Monk being my favorites - I was all set for something really great in this new series. Disappointment is a mild discription of my trudge through this lenghty boring experience.
Rating: 
Summary: Great story!
Review: Anne Perry has created new characters that should be as well-liked as her Victorian characters. From the first chapter I was hooked into the story with the loss of parents in a car accident and how the siblings took the news and dealt with the death of their parents. The two brothers' characters were well-developed and hopefully, the sisters will appear later too.
The plots were inter-woven by a master author and I look forward to see how Anne Perry will develop the plot as she moves the characters and the readers into World War I.
Rating: 
Summary: Anne Perry ... Updated and Better than Ever
Review: Anne Perry has the Victorian mystery down pat - but her books have always fallen short of captivating me. But with this latest book, the first in a series that takes place during World War I, everything changes. Perhaps the change of venue has done her good; perhaps I am more in tune with that period in English history. But for whatever reason, I loved this book. It takes place in the hallowed halls of Cambridge; murder racks the personal lives of one of the professors, Joseph Reavley, as well as the students in residence, as suspicion is cast over all. Joseph's brother has a somewhat minor job in the British Secret Service, and as the crime consumes the daily lives of its characters, so does war loom over all of England.
The crime and the impending war are clearly related, so as war draws closer, so does the importance of solving the murder. No, war will not be held off if the murder is solved - history is used as a back drop here and an important character in itself. But World War I would do more than just cause a few years of chaos and untold casualties .... this is what we know as the Great War - literally the war that changed both the face and character of Europe. World War I forced England into the 20th century, and the England will will emerge is not the same one that entered. There is an overriding sense of loss and recognition that the world is about to change in this book -especially for the students at Cambridge. Solving the crime ties up a loose end - but the real crime is in the stupidity - and inevitability - of war.
This is a book that explores not only the characters' responses to a crime, but the mood of a generation that is about to go to war. This is not history steeped in dates, but an exploration of what world events do to people and the psyche of a country about to experience massive change. At the book's close, characters start to don uniforms, preparing for the next step, which is taking up arms.
There are four more books in the series - and I eagerly await them. Ann Perry has always been a great re-creator of time and place, and I truly believe that talent has been elevated in this latest book.
Rating: 
Summary: No Graves As Yet
Review: Anne Perry is my all time favorite author and I love all the Pitt and Monk series, but I was sorry that I spent money on this book. It was nowhere near up to par with her previous books. I labored through about two thirds of the book and then just had to give up. I did not like it at all.
Rating:
Summary: Is this how to or how not to write good historical fiction?
Review: Anyone who wants to become a successful novelist must read and learn to analyze the work of writers already popular and held in high regard. Anne Perry, a best-selling author with two successful historical mystery series, certainly qualifies as someone aspiring writers should be able to learn from. I read several of her Thomas and Charlotte Pitt mysteries, but that was some years ago. A new series set during World War I intrigued me, as the historical novel I am currently working on begins in 1924. Has my study of novel writing made me too analytical, too nitpicky? I don't think so, since anyone wishing to write great fiction must set very high standards for themselves in today's highly competitive publishing world. Historical fiction especially demands that the writer knows her time period backwards and forwards. The first chapter of "No Graves As Yet" could do with fewer names for readers to begin learning all at once. One has no way of knowing whether all these people will be important to the story, and thus necessary to become familiar with. The vast majority of Americans know nothing of the rules of cricket, and could do with some simple explanation of the game. For heaven's sake, what is a "lych" gate? The word doesn't appear in any of my four American dictionaries, but I'd still like to know. Perhaps I should look it up on the Internet... Every once in a while, Perry surprises me with some obviously passive sentences, something my writing teacher would have insisted I rewrite. Example: "Perhaps she would have been divorced by Thyer." This clearly should have been written: "Perhaps Thyer would have divorced her." Perry, in her CBS Early Morning interview, spoke of four Reavley sibings appearing in her story, so it was a disappointment that the two sisters, Hannah and Judith, were such minor characters. They came across as flat. Joseph and Matthew could have been livened up a bit as well. Being somewhat dubious of Perry's historical accuracy, I was prompted to do a little research on my own when I read of the main character taking "two aspirins." Did they even have aspirin back in those days? It took less than five minutes on the Internet to learn that sure enough, the Bayer company had obtained a patent for it in 1889. Aspirin tablets, however, were not manufactured until 1915. It would have been much more authentic to show Joseph Reavley using some aspirin powder, which is all that would have been available in 1914. Perry was off by only one year, but my point is that historical fiction demands extreme attention to tiny details such as this. I will leave it to others to express their disappointment in the uninteresting characters, the contrived nature of the mystery's solution, her overuse of phonetic dialogue, repeated use of the adverb "huskily," and her excessive focus on a red herring that had Joseph Reavley jumping to too many conclusions. Have I learned anything about good historical fiction? Yes. It's never a breeze to write, even for someone of Anne Perry's caliber and reputation.
Rating:
Summary: Not That Bad!
Review: As an Anne Perry fan, I recognize that this series is a departure from her usual 19th London mysteries. However, I thought this first book in the series does what it has to do. It lays the foundation for the other four books. Perry always gives me a wonderful sense of the time period in her novels and this book is no exception. This series will obviously contain many moral dilemmas - again, a bit of a departure for Perry. However, I think some of the comments on the low ratings are unjustified.
Rating:
Summary: Damned with Faint Praise
Review: Her books on the 19th century were informative, suspenseful, entertaining and well-written. She lost something in translation to the 20th century. The ambigious, wandering philosophical comments may have had a purpose; but she forgot what they were. The plot was capable of much more complexity, even if only in the hands of the principals. The ending was an anticlimax, leaving me glad the book was done. The mysterious characters who appeared twice in the book were unexplained. Why did she waste time with them? Much hand-wringing throughout the book. And the purpose? It's good to have libraries where one may read before buying.
Rating:
Summary: Doesn't fulfill its promise.
Review: Honestly, I have never been a big fan of Anne Perry's Victorian mystery series (Pitt, Monk), but I thought this one, set just before the outbreak of the first World War, was going to be different. However, just as I found Charles Todd's recent stand-alone, The Murder Stone, to be highly unsatisfactory, so is this book. This novel starts out with a bang and then peters out gradually over the rest of its course. The protagonists, Joseph and Matthew Reavly, are trying to get to the bottom of some sort of dire conspiracy that will do great harm to England on the eve of World War I. Their father, who discovered the existence of the conspiracy, is murdered, together with his wife, on the same day Archduke Ferdinand and his wife are asassinated in Sarajevo. As the investigation goes on, one of Joseph's prize students at Cambridge is found dead in his room, apparently murdered. Now the two investigations progress (sort of) side by side, with some suspicion that they may be related. Unfortunately, the story gets so bogged down with debates and discussions about the Home Rule issue and whether England will be drawn into a war, and a ton of historical facts and "atmosphere," that the story only hobbles along. On top of everything else, the ending is very open-ended: Do the brothers really know the truth about the conspiracy, their parents' murder, and the death of Sebastian Allard, or don't they? Maybe the story is continued in the next volume. If not, this book ought to get one star instead of two.
Rating:
Summary: Superb beginning to an Intellectual Saga
Review: I am frankly astonished at the reviews of this fine book appearing on this site. No Graves as Yet is a beautifully crafted and entirely convincing portrayal of the intellectual climate of England at the beginning of the Great War and serves as the entry portal to what promises to be a subtle and evocative examination of the moral issues that faced England in 1914-18. The mystery is secondary to the evaluation of the question of what issues justify war, and the picture drawn of Cambridge in the summer of 1914 is the necessary predicate for the broader picture that will, presumably, be sketched in the remainder of the series.
If the Reavely characters seem a bit callow in this novel, it is because their characters, assumptions and world views have not yet been tested. This story, involving the seemingly accidental death of their parents, begins the process of testing the assumptions by which Edwardian England lived and which were shattered by the experiences of the war.
While I think this novel is beautifully written and the characters a good deal subtler than other reviewers, by all means reading this novel should be followed immediately by reading its sequel Shoulder the Sky, which carries the story into the war through May, 1915 and gives a better feel of the author's overall plan for the series.
I recommend both books most highly.
Rating:
Summary: Covers the mystery from a different angle
Review: I bought Shoulder the Sky (the second in this series, and this is my first Perry book) the day I finished No Graves as Yet, mostly because I like the way Perry showed how the people within this novel are forced to look at themselves and the people around them instead of just the routine 'hunt for the killer' format found elsewhere. Instead of studying the mind of the killer, Perry gives a study of those effected by the deeds.
In spots this book also reads like a travelouge, but it never distracts and in fact enhances the feel of the book. I was surprised she was able to wrap up the whole story nicely in the final chapter. I did not think it could be done well when I started it. I was wrong, and this book is so right..., sounds like a corny 70's love song I know.
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