Charles Todd

Ian Rutledge returns to his job at Scotland Yard after five years on the battlefield, keeping secret the fact that he is still suffering from shell shock, and almost immediately is sent to investigate the case of a murdered military officer in which the chief suspect is a much-decorated war hero.

"A man is murdered at a society wedding held at Ely Cathedral, and the local police are mystified. In the end, they send for Scotland Yard, but not before another man is killed. This time, there's a witness, but her description of the killer is so strange that no one believes her. So it's Scotland Yard Inspector Ian Rutledge's task to find out who the murderer is and why he has set out on this killing spree, because there is another death, and the...

"Spring, 1921. Scotland Yard sends Inspector Ian Rutledge to the sea-battered village of Walmer on the coast of Essex, where amongst the salt flats and a military airfield lies Benton Abbey, a grand manor with a storied past. The lady of the house may prove his most bewildering witness yet. She claims she saw a violent murder--but there is no body, no blood. She also insists she recognized the killer: Captain Nelson. Only it could not have been Nelson...

It's 1920. Three men are dead, all garroted, all war veterans. When a piece of evidence, kept from the public, suggests a much stronger link between the victims and the unknown, it's up to World War I battered survivor, Scotland Yard Detective Ian Rutledge to find the killer.

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

...

In December 1919, when five members of a family are found slaughtered in the kitchen of their Lake District cottage, Inspector Ian Rutledge investigates the crime as well as the disappearance of the missing youngest child in the family.

"Unhealed scars of the Great War still torment Scotland Yard Inspector Ian Rutledge. A haunted, damaged shell of a man, he has been sent to the small coastal town of Hampton Regis to solve a violent crime and to confront his own tragic past. An officer who served with Rutledge in the trenches of France before being sent back to England under suspicious circumstances has now been accused of savagely beating the husband of the woman he still loves....

The daughter of a distinguished soldier, Bess Crawford follows in his footsteps and signs up to go overseas as a nurse during the Great War, helping to deal with the many wounded. There, serving on a hospital ship, she makes a promise to a dying young lieutenant to take a message to his brother, Jonathan Graham: "Tell Jonathan that I lied. I did it for Mother's sake. But it has to be set right." Later, when her ship is sunk by a mine and she's sidelined...

Searching for a witness who may have evidence proving that a deadly explosion was not an accident, Bess Crawford journeys to the frontlines of war-torn France and risks her life to protect the witness from a dangerous assailant.

A simple theft leads to unforeseen tragedy in this story from the New York Times–bestselling author of the Inspector Ian Rutledge Mysteries. In a quaint antiquarian bookshop in the Midlands of England, a woman is captivated by a rare gilt-edged devotional nestled within an exquisite and equally tempting box. Her desire to pilfer it overcomes her scruples, and her guilt and terror at doing something so audacious, so unlike her. With a simple sleight...