The Times Thriller of the Year 2022'' **A BBC Between the Covers Book Club Pick****A Times Thriller of the Month**''The world has been waiting for a worthy successor to Sebastian Faulks'' Birdsong - now Philip Gray has delivered it'' David Young, author of Stasi ChildTHE GUNS ARE SILENT. THE DEAD ARE NOT.1919. On the desolate battlefields of northern France, the guns of the Great War are silent. Special battalions now face the dangerous task of gathering up the dead for mass burial.Captain Mackenzie, a survivor of the war, cannot yet bring himself to go home. First he must see that his fallen comrades are recovered and laid to rest. His task is upended when a gruesome discovery is made beneath the ruins of a German strongpoint.Amy Vanneck''s fiancé is one soldier lost amongst many, but she cannot accept that his body may never be found. She heads to France, determined to discover what became of the man she loved.It soon becomes clear that what Mackenzie has uncovered is a war crime of inhuman savagery. As the dark truth leaches out, both he and Amy are drawn into the hunt for a psychopath, one for whom the atrocity at Two Storm Wood is not an end, but a beginning.For fans of Ben MacIntyre, Munich by Robert Harris and Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith.''Haunting, cinematic, and utterly gripping'' D.B. John, author of Star of the North''Atmospheric and meticulously researched '' Abir Mukherjee, author of The Shadows of Men