Much-loved Maisie Dobbs returns to investigate her third case, a thrilling story of family tensions and mysterious deaths in World War I

London, 1930. Maisie Dobbs, the renowned psychologist and investigator, receives a most unusual request. She must prove that Sir Cecil Lawton's son Ralph really is dead.

This is a case that will challenge Maisie in unexpected ways, for Ralph Lawton was an aviator shot down by enemy fire in 1917. To get to the bottom of the mystery, Maisie must travel to the former battlefields of northern France, where she served as a nurse in the Great War and where ghosts of her past still linger. As her investigation moves closer to the truth, Maisie soon uncovers the secrets and lies that some people would prefer remain buried.

'Maisie Dobbs in a delightful character . . . an enjoyable mystery' Literary Review