Pictures of Lily — James Philip

What if ghosts really exist? Not as spectres, not as whispers in the night but as real people who simply find themselves out of their time and place like fallen angels. Pictures of Lily is the second book of a series of supernatural mysteries - The Strangers Bureau - featuring veteran Sûreté detective Eleanor Gerard and set in the now tranquil but historically blood soaked landscape of Northern France In Pictures of Lily Captain Eleanor Gerard of the Valenciennes Sûreté is plunged into a mystery that threatens to turn her whole life upside down when a wounded man wearing the uniform of a British Army officer, is discovered in the middle of what seems to be a previously unknown, virtually complete Great War trench system. When the wounded soldier claims to be a famous pre-World War I adventurer and explorer - Claude Danson - who was reported killed in action on 6th November 1918 the mystery deepens. Within hours the mystery becomes an international news story when it emerges that photographs found on the wounded man - his Pictures of Lily - could be the twin sisters of Eleanor, her twelve year old daughter, and France's most famous entertainer of the Great War period, Lily Verlaine. Suddenly, Eleanor's past career and the reputation of one of the wealthiest families in the Republic are under the fiercest media spotlight and mystery piles upon mystery, coincidence upon coincidence until dark forces from Eleanor's past, and the paranoia of her political masters combine to threaten a bloody denouement which only she can defuse. When the long dead past come back to haunt the modern world what becomes of our most deeply rooted beliefs?