Bandon Public Library

"New York Times bestselling author Charles Todd takes readers on a trip to Ian Rutledge's past, with the story of the last case the Scotland Yard detective tackles before he goes off to fight in World War I"--

In the ruins of Yorkshire's Fountains Abbey lies the body of a man wrapped in a cloak, the face covered by a gas mask. Next to him is a book on alchemy, which belongs to the schoolmaster, a conscientious objector in the Great War. Who is this man, and is the investigation into his death being manipulated by a thirst for revenge?

Meanwhile, the British War Office is searching for a missing man of their own, someone whose war work was so secret

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Troubled Scotland Yard inspector Ian Rutledge wrestles with a startling and dangerous case that reaches far into the past when a false confession from a man who is not who he claims to be leads to a brutal murder

Caring for an unstable soldier who believes his distant cousin is responsible for his injuries, battlefield nurse Bess Crawford investigates the patient's claims, only to find herself in unexpected danger.

"Inspector Ian Rutledge's 22nd case revolves around two young women found dead in utterly unexpected places. Scheduled to give evidence in an ongoing investigation, Rutledge can't go to the village of Avebury--where a body has been found stabbed to death in the center of a circle of prehistoric stones--in the place of Chief Inspector Brian Leslie when Rutledge's nemesis, Chief Superintendent Markham, sends Leslie there when he'd been looking forward...

At an aid station in France in October 1918, Bess Crawford, a nurse, encounters an injured, unidentified French lieutenant, who yells in fluent German after being attacked by a fellow patient. Though Bess's matron suggests that the Frenchman is from German-speaking Alsace-Lorraine, Bess isn't so sure. Two weeks later, Bess is shot while in the trenches and is sent to Paris to recuperate, and finds the perfect opportunity to pursue the matter, with...

When the clues in a hit-and-run investigation lead him to two families famous for producing and selling the world's best Madeira wine, Scotland Yard's Ian Rutledge is pitted against his new supervisor who, dismissing the evidence, has his own suspect

"Restless and uncertain of her future in the wake of World War I, former battlefield nurse Bess Crawford agrees to travel to Yorkshire to help a friend of her cousin Melinda through surgery. But circumstances change suddenly when news of a terrible accident reaches them. Bess agrees to go to isolated Scarfdale and the Neville family, where one man has been killed and another gravely injured. The police are asking questions, and Bess is quickly drawn...

In Charles Todd's Wings of Fire, Inspector Ian Rutledge is quickly sent to investigate the sudden deaths of three members of the same eminent Cornwall family, but the World War I veteran soon realizes that nothing about this case is routine.
Including the identity of one of the dead, a reclusive spinster unmasked as O. A. Manning, whose war poetry helped Rutledge retain his grasp on sanity in the trenches of France. Guided by

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"Years before the Great War summoned Bess Crawford to serve as a battlefield nurse, the indomitable heroine spent her childhood in India under the watchful eye of her friend and confidant, the young soldier Simon Brandon. The two formed an inseparable bond on the dangerous Northwest Frontier where her father's Regiment held the Khyber Pass against all intruders. It was Simon who taught Bess to ride and shoot, escorted her to the bazaars and the Maharani's...