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A Forgotten Place

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

Though the Great War has ended, Bess Crawford finds herself caught in deadly circumstances on a remote Welsh headland in this tenth entry from the acclaimed New York Times bestselling author.

The fighting has ended, the Armistice signed, but the war has left wounds that are still agonizingly raw. Battlefield Nurse Bess Crawford has been assigned to a clinic for amputees, and the Welsh patients worry her. She does her best to help them, but it's clear that they have nothing to go home to, in a valley where only the fit can work in the coal pits. When they are released, she fears that peace will do what war couldn't—take their lives.

Their officer, Captain 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. Requesting leave, she quietly travels to Wales, and that bleak coal mining village, but she is too late.

Captain Williams' sister tells Bess he has left the valley. Bess is afraid he intends to kill himself. She follows him to an isolated, storm-battered peninsula—a harsh and forgotten place where secrets and death go hand in hand. Deserted by her frightened driver, 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 knows where she is.

Why is there no Constable out here? And who is the mysterious Ellen? Captain Williams and his brother's widow 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 Brandon, searching for Bess and unaware of his danger. . . .

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    • Kirkus

      July 15, 2018
      Nursing sister Bess Crawford's errand of mercy to a seemingly innocuous village in the Gower Peninsula of South Wales turns slowly into a waking nightmare.A year after the Great War has ended, Bess (A Casualty of War, 2017, etc.) is still working with veterans who lost limbs after being wounded on the front when she's called away from Gloucestershire by an entreaty from Capt. Hugh Williams, who's recovered sufficiently from his depression after the amputation of a leg to become thoroughly alarmed that he and the men formerly under his command are at a high risk for suicide. Taking advantage of some vacation time, Bess follows Hugh's trail to Swansea, then to the village of Caudle, where Rachel, his brother Tom's farm widow, has taken him in. Trouble starts almost the moment Bess arrives. The driver who's brought her to the village vanishes mysteriously the first night she's there, leaving her with no obvious way to leave. As she does her best to strengthen Hugh's own resolve to live amid his sorrows, a slow wave of violence washes over the village. Even though Hugh insists he fell down, someone's clearly attacked him. Then Oliver Martin, who arrived in the company of Ellen Marshall, a well-to-do Cardiff woman who's returned to Caudle, where she used to summer with her grandfather, is beaten more thoroughly, and Edward Stephenson is found clubbed to death on the strand. What's even more disturbing to Bess is her dawning sense that the villagers have united to keep a secret so dreadful that they can't afford to let her leave to share her suspicions with any outsiders. Will the intervention of Sgt. Maj. Simon Brandon, her father's old batman, be sufficient to rescue Bess from the worst vacation ever?Todd patiently, decorously evokes a sense of suffocating unease before the inevitably anticlimactic conclusion.

      COPYRIGHT(2018) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

    • Publisher's Weekly

      July 23, 2018
      WWI has finally ended in Mary Higgins Clark Award–winner Todd’s memorable 10th mystery featuring British nurse Bess Crawford (after 2017’s A Casualty of War). Despite the conclusion of the fighting, Bess still has plenty of soldiers to tend to at a hospital in France—in particular, a group of Welsh soldiers, whose serious injuries make their future employment doubtful. When she’s reassigned to a clinic back in England, Bess is reunited with the Welshmen, only to find several of them suicidal. Following their discharge, their leader, Capt. Hugh Williams, writes to inform her that one of the privates took his own life, and to ask for help to avert future suicides. She uses some leave to seek Williams out, ending up in a desolate and isolated town on the Welsh coast, where he’s suspected of his own brother’s murder. His warning that it’s not safe for Bess to remain there proves prescient. The atmosphere of the claustrophobic community Bess is trapped in is palpable as Todd (the mother-and-son writing team of Caroline and Charles Todd) expertly ratchets up the suspense. Agent: Lisa Gallagher, DeFiore & Co.

    • Library Journal

      August 1, 2018

      The fighting has ended, but the Great War is not over for soldiers or battlefield nurses such as Bess Crawford. The Welsh amputees she's been tending won't be able to work in the coal mines back home, and she's worried enough to follow them to their village after receiving a despairing letter from their captain. But the captain has vanished, and trying to locate him lands Bess among hostile strangers. With a 75,000-copy first printing.

      Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

    • Library Journal

      August 1, 2018

      Bess Crawford's tenth adventure has her once again doing her best to rehabilitate injured soldiers. This time she's nursing a group of suicidally depressed men from a remote Welsh mining village. She decides to use her precious leave to follow them home, hoping to intervene and convince their captain to put on a brave face for his men. Once she's tracked down the captain, Bess gets stranded and can only hope the ever-faithful Simon Brandon will discover where she is and rescue her. And maybe he'll help figure out why people are disappearing and what momentous secret the villagers are hiding. VERDICT A typical entry in this World War I mystery series, filled with period detail but rather light on character development. Readers may become impatient with Bess's impulsive behavior, as her compassion so often gets her into trouble. [See Prepub Alert, 3/12/18.]--Laurel Bliss, San Diego State Univ. Lib.

      Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

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