The Watcher in the Pine

A police lieutenant in Fascist Spain finds his new assignment a threat to his family in this novel in the Edgar Award–winning series.

Spain, 1940: Potes, a remote northern mountain village, is Carlos Tejada’s first independent Guardia Civil command. He soon discovers that this “promotion” is a mixed blessing. The villagers are unwelcoming. He and his pregnant wife, Elena, have no place to live but the jail, and his own men seem strangely hostile.

Is it just their suspicion of his wife’s Republican sympathies? Or is there more going on in the beautiful but bleak area, recently devastated by the civil war? Tejada discovers that there may, indeed, be a new outbreak of that war, with Potes as its epicenter. And as the danger increases, he must find a way to reconcile his love for his wife with his duty . . .