George Edalji (that’s Ay-dal-ji, by the way, since Parsee names are always stressed on the first syllable) is the son of a Staffordshire vicar of Indian origin and his Scottish wife. George is thus a half-cast, to use the language of his late-Victorian and Edwardian age. He’s a diligent, if not too distinguished a scholar. He is uninterested in sport, is of small stature and doesn’t see too well. He sleeps with his father behind a locked door, is in bed by 9:30, becomes a small town solicitor who develops an interest in train timetables and, by way of outlandish diversion, publishes a traveller’s guide to railway law.

In offering a review of a novel by William Boyd I could certainly be accused of bias. I would proudly plead guilty, since I regard him as one of just four or five British writers who are capable of constructing supreme works of fiction, written in a framework that is both informative and thought-provoking and all this set within a continuum of contemporary or historical events which themselves become re-interpreted by the fiction. In Restless, Boyd’s latest novel, he has re-stated this ability and, if anything, written it larger via a smaller form.

Will Hutchison is an award-winning author whose new novel is set during the Crimean War. He is a graduate of Syracuse University, with twenty-six years as an officer in the US Army and Marine Corps. He has spent his life in interesting and often dangerous endeavors, from leading Marines in Vietnam, to working as an undercover drug agent in Amsterdam with military CID, to serving as a Federal special agent conducting fraud investigations and counter-terrorism initiatives at nuclear plants. He resides in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where he pursues his writing and photography, with occasional law enforcement consulting projects. As an avocation, he has written and lectured on nineteenth century military history internationally for over twenty years.