Cruel Deception, A

“As always, Todd’s intense feelings for the traumatized survivors of war make one mother’s son the broken hero of an entire generation of lost souls.”  — The New York Times Book Review

In the aftermath of World War I, English nurse Bess Crawford attempts to save a troubled officer from a mysterious killer in this eleventh book in the acclaimed Bess Crawford mystery series.

The Armistice of November 1918 ended the fighting, but the
Great War will not be over until a Peace Treaty is drawn up and signed by all
parties involved. Representatives from the Allies are gathering in Paris, and
already ominous signs of disagreement have appeared.

Sister Bess Crawford, who has been working with the severely
wounded in England in the war’s wake, is asked to carry out a personal mission
in Paris for a Matron at the London headquarters of The Queen Alexandra’s.

Bess is facing decisions about her own future, even as she
searches for Lawrence Minton. When she finally locates him, instead of the
intelligent, ambitious officer she expects, she finds a bitter and disturbed
man who has abdicated his duties at the Peace Conference and is well on his way
toward an addiction to opiates. Indeed, he tells her that he doesn’t care if he
lives or dies, he only wants oblivion. But what has changed him? What is it
that haunts him? It seems the truth is buried so deep in his mind that he can
only relive it in wild nightmares. When Minton goes missing, bent on suicide,
Bess must race to unlock his past before he succeeds.

Reluctant to trust an officer in Minton’s regiment, a man
with secrets of his own, and uncertain of the loyalties of Matron’s friends in
Paris, Bess must rely on her own instincts and experience—and sometimes in
desperation on a stranger who claims he never met Minton.

Could whatever happened to Minton in Paris somehow be
connected to his war? And why did he not kill Bess when he had the chance—then
later, viciously attack her without warning? What is destroying Lieutenant
Minton? Or is it who? And what horror will she have to confront, if she
is to save him?

In this, the eleventh novel in the award-winning Bess
Crawford series, New York Times bestselling author Charles Todd delivers
a rich and atmospheric portrait that illuminates the cost of war on human lives—the
lingering pain and horror that no peace, no matter how earned, can assuage.