It is 1919, and the War to End All Wars has been won. But for Scotland Yard Inspector Ian Rutledge, recently returned from the battlefields of France, there is no peace. Suffering from shell shock, he plunges into his work to save his sanity. But his first assignment is a case certain to spell both personal and professional disaster. A popular colonel has been murdered in Warwickshire, and the main suspect is a decorated war hero. No matter what the...

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 that...

In post-World War I England, Scotland Yard detective Ian Rutledge faces a wall of silence as he attempts to bring a ruthless killer to justice for the bludgeoning death of a Lancashire woman and the murder of a man who never came home from the Great War.

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 has his own suspect.

"On a fine summer's day in June 1914, Ian Ritledge is planning to propose to a woman he deeply loves, despite hits from his family and friends that she may not be the most suitable choice for a policeman's wife. To the north, another man in love--a Scottish Highlander named Hamish MacLeod--asks his own sweetheart to marry him. Back in England, a son grieves for his mother, dredging up a dark injustice that will trigger a series of murders that Rutledge...

"On the eve of the bloody Battle of the Somme, a group of English officers having a last drink before returning to the Front make a promise to each other: if they survive the battle ahead--and make it through the war--they will meet in Paris a year after the fighting ends. They will celebrate their good fortune by racing motorcars they beg, borrow, or own from Paris to Nice. In November 1919, the officers all meet as planned, and though their motorcars...

An astonishing tip from a grateful ex-convict seems implausible--but Inspector Ian Rutledge is intrigued and brings it to his superior at Scotland Yard. Alan Barrington, who has evaded capture for ten years, is the suspect in an appalling murder during Black Ascot, the famous 1910 royal horse race honoring the late King Edward VII. His disappearance began a manhunt that consumed Britain for a decade. Now it appears that Barrington has returned to...

Chief Inspector Brian Leslie, a respected colleague of Ian Rutledge's, is sent to Avebury, a village set inside a great prehistoric stone circle not far from Stonehenge. A young woman has been murdered next to a mysterious, hooded, figure-like stone, but no one recognizes her--or admits to it. And how did she get there? Despite a thorough investigation, it appears that her killer has simply vanished. Rutledge, returning from the conclusion of a case...

"Scotland Yard's Ian Rutledge is faced with his most perplexing case yet: a murder with no body, and a killer who can only be a ghost"-- 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...