Book
An Irish Hostage
by Charles Todd
Book 12 in the Bess Crawford Mysteries series.
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Bess Crawford travels to County Galway for the wedding of a fellow nurse, expecting a brief reunion after the war. Instead the groom disappears, a man is murdered and the bride’s family is divided over relatives involved in the struggle against British rule. As suspicion turns towards Bess and her hosts, she must work with people who have every reason to distrust an English officer’s daughter.
Set during the Irish revolutionary period, the novel treats political allegiance as a lived family conflict rather than a distant constitutional issue. Memories of the Easter Rising, reprisals and wartime service complicate every statement. Bess’s usual confidence in British institutions is tested in a community where those institutions are themselves part of the danger.