A Forgotten Place: A Bess Crawford Mystery (Bess Crawford Mysteries, 10) - Hardcover

At the end of the Great War, Bess Crawford finds herself caught in deadly circumstances on a remote Welsh headland in this atmospheric mystery from the acclaimed New York Times bestselling author

Though the Armistice has been signed and the guns silenced, the suffering has not ended. Many soldiers carry wounds that are still agonizingly raw and may never heal. Back in England but remaining in service, battlefield Nurse Bess Crawford has been assigned to a clinic for the severely injured—amputees, gas cases, and burns. Among these patients are Welsh soldiers who will return home to their valley utterly changed. No longer can they work at their old jobs mining coal. Though she does her best to raise their spirits, Bess knows the future will be difficult for them and their families when they are finally released.
She fears that peace will do what war could not—take their lives.

A few weeks after they return home, their officer, Captain Hugh Williams, writes to describe their despair, and his own at trying to save his men. Bess feels compelled to look into their situation, but the Army and the clinic can do nothing. When her reply comes back marked “return to sender,” she decides
to act. Due for ten days of leave, Bess quietly travels to that bleak coal-mining village in Wales. But she is too late.

Captain Williams’s sister tells Bess he has left the valley. Fearing that he intends to kill himself, she follows him to an isolated, storm-battered peninsula—a harsh and forgotten place where sinister secrets and death seem to go hand in hand. Deserted by her frightened driver in the middle of the night, Bess is stranded among strangers suspicious of outsiders. She quickly discovers these villagers are hiding something, and she’s learned too much to be allowed to leave. What’s more, no one in England—not the matron at the clinic, not her parents, not even her friend Simon Brandon—knows where she is.

Why is there no Constable out here? Why were two bodies that mysteriously washed ashore buried in unmarked graves without an inquiry or even a prayer? And who is the mysterious neighbor who just arrived by motorcar, yet refuses to aid Bess? Captain Williams and his brother’s widow, Rachel, are her only allies, and Bess must take care not to put them at risk as she tries to find answers. But there is a murderer here who is driven to kill again and again. And the next person in his sights is Simon, searching for Bess and unaware of the danger ahead.

Charles Todd is the New York Times bestselling author of the Inspector Ian Rutledge mysteries, the Bess Crawford mysteries, and two stand-alone novels. Among the honors accorded to the Ian Rutledge mysteries are the Barry Award and nominations for the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association’s Dilys Award, the Edgar and Anthony Awards in the U.S., and the John Creasey Award in the UK. A mother-and-son writing team, they live on the East Coast.