"A well-earned vacation takes a sharp detour when Scotland Yard inspector Joe Sandilands is called to France, where a shell-shocked patient - a tragic casualty of war - is in the throes of a violent nightmare. Trying to determine the mystery man's identity proves a difficult, internationally delicate task: several families are claiming the unknown soldier as their own." "But it is at a famed chateau, where the wine flows and disturbing secrets abound, that Sandilands meets a woman who takes his investigation in a chillingly different direction. Strong-willed and alluring Aline Houdart's husband has been missing and presumed dead for nearly ten years. Her true motives are as elusive as the truth about a long-ago night ... when a horrific crime was committed and lives changed forever. Now Sandilands, an ex-soldier himself, a man who has seen his share of bloodshed and sorrow, is waging his own battle for justice. It is a fight for his fallen comrades that will unmask a killer. Or bury the truth forever."--BOOK JACKET. General Adult. Dispatched to France to help a glamorous French war widow prove that a mysterious amnesiac soldier is actually her husband, sleuth Joe Sandilands investigates four conflicting identifications as well as the suspicions of the mans doctor, in a case that reveals an array of sinister motives. Reprint. 20,000 first printing.