New York Times bestselling author Charles Todd takes readers on a trip to Ian Rutledge's past, with the story of the last case the Scotland Yard detective tackles before he goes off to fight in World War I.
On a fine summer's day in June, 1914, the Great War is still only the distant crack of revolver shots at a motorcar in faraway Sarajevo. And Ian Rutledge, already an Inspector at Scotland Yard, has decided to propose to the woman he's so deeply in love with-despite hints from friends and family that she may not be the wisest choice. In Scotland, a Highlander shows his own love the house he's planning to build for her in September.
But in another part of England, a man stands in the kitchen of his widowed mother's house, waiting for the undertaker to come for her body, and stares at the clock on the mantel board. He doesn't know yet that he will become Rutledge's last case before Britain is drawn into war. He doesn't even know what he will do with his life, now. But in the weeks to come, as summer moves on toward the shadows of August, he will set out to right a wrong, and Rutledge will find himself having to choose between the Yard and his country, between the woman he loves and duty, and between truth and honor.
