The Winter Guest: A Mystery - Hardcover

by W. C. Ryan (Author)

SHORTLISTED FOR THE CWA GOLD DAGGER AWARD
A haunting, atmospheric mystery set against a country divided, by the author of A House of Ghosts.

January 1921. Though the Great War is over, in Ireland a new civil war is raging. The once-grand Kilcolgan House, a crumbling bastion shrouded in sea mist, lies half empty and filled with ghosts, both real and imagined, while it shelters the surviving members of the Prendeville family. Then, when an IRA ambush goes terribly wrong, Maud Prendeville, Lord Kilcolgan's eldest daughter, is killed, leaving the family reeling. Yet the IRA column behind the attack insists they left her alive, that someone else must be responsible for her terrible fate. Captain Tom Harkin, an IRA intelligence officer and Maud's former fiancé, is sent to investigate. He becomes an unwelcome guest in this strange, gloomy household.

Working undercover, Harkin must delve into the house's secrets--and discover where, in this fractured, embattled town, allegiances truly lie. But Harkin too is haunted by the ghosts of the past and by his terrible experiences on the battlefields. Can he find the truth about Maud's death before the past--and his strange, unnerving surroundings--overwhelm him?

The Winter Guest is a gripping and immersive read for fans of classic mysteries by the likes of Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers along with Charles Todd's Ian Rutledge series, Ann Cleeves, and Jacqueline Winspear.

Author Biography

W. C. Ryan is also known as William Ryan, who has won acclaim for his historical crime novels in the Captain Korolev series. The first Captain Korolev book, The Holy Thief, was shortlisted for a Crime Writers' Association's New Blood Dagger, a Barry Award, the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award, and the Theakston's Crime Novel of the Year. The second, The Bloody Meadow, was shortlisted for the Ireland AM Crime Novel of the Year, and the third, The Twelfth Department, was also shortlisted for the Ireland AM Crime Novel of the Year as well as the CWA's Historical Fiction Dagger and was a Guardian Crime Novel of the Year. The Constant Soldier was shortlisted for the CWA Steel Dagger, the HWA gold crown, and the Irish Crime Novel of the Year. His first novel under the name W. C. Ryan, A House of Ghosts, was a finalist for the NBA Irish Book Awards Crime Fiction Book of the Year. His books have been published in eighteen countries. William lives in London.