Red Planet

In a quiet English village, Major Duncan Meredyth tends his garden and his wounds. A disabled veteran of the Boer Wars, he has carved out a fragile peace in the countryside, watching the first months of the Great War unfold from a distance. But peace is a fragile thing when you're keeping secrets. Meredyth protects a devastating truth about one of the village's most beloved sons, a man whose fate could destroy everything the community holds dear. As the war creeps closer and the fabric of small-town life begins to fray, he must navigate impossible choices between loyalty and truth, between protecting the innocent and honoring his own conscience. The novel pulses with quiet tension, building to revelations that feel both shocking and inevitable. Locke's achievement is showing how wartime silence can be as devastating as battle itself, and how ordinary people in extraordinary times carry weights the world will never see.