A Duty to the Dead (Bess Crawford Mysteries, 1)

5 stars1916 in the Mediterranean Bess Crawford and her fellow nurses are aboard the Britannic sailing toward their next posting. When the ship was hit by a mine or torpedo, panic ensues. The order is given to abandon ship and even though she sustained a broken arm, she aids the other nurses in boarding the lifeboats. Fortunately, they had no wounded aboard. Sadly they watched the Britannic go down.Once back home in England, with her arm healing, she Bess recalls her promise made to a dying soldier, Arthur Graham. It is to tell his brother Jonathan that he lied to protect his mother and that Jonathan has to set it right. Arthur did not explain any further. Bess journeys to the Graham home and meets Jonathan, his brother and his mother. She and Jonathan go out to Arthur’s memorial and Bess tells him what his brother said. Jonathan seems both indifferent and unmoved by the message.Peregrine, the eldest brother who has been confined to an asylum due to his young age when he was supposed to have murdered a woman has pneumonia. He is brought back to Owlhurst basically to die. None of his family wants anything to do with him, which Bess thinks is both odd and unkind. He is very ill by the time he gets there and doesn’t know where he is. She delays her going home so as to nurse him.When a local man named Ted Booker who was suffering from shell shock killed himself, Bess gets a visit from Inspector Howard. Bess tended to the man during some of his episodes. Bess suspects that not all was as reported with the suicide, for Jonathan was very angry with Ted and reportedly went to see him shortly before he killed himself. Mrs. Denton, Ted’s mother-in-law was also very much against Ted.At Ted’s inquest, the Graham family receives a distressing letter. Has Peregrine died? They hurry home. Bess is summarily packed up and told to leave. When she reaches her flat in London, she is startled to be awakened by Peregrine in her kitchen. She is frightened, for she still believes Peregrine to be a killer. Her belief begins to change.In an exciting denouement, we finally learn the truth. Who did kill the young maid? Why?This book is extremely well written and plotted. The tension in the story starts out immediately and continues. I appreciate the professionalism and compassion with which Bess carried out her duties. She is the very illustration of an excellent nurse, whether it was in 1916 or today. This book illustrates very well the effects shell shock has on the individual and the family. I must say that Bess’ psychological insights were very advanced for her day. I have read the Todd’s Inspector Ian Rutledge novels, but this is my first foray into the Bess Crawford series. I will most certainly continue to read them.

I like very cerebral mysteries and I felt I’d found one here. But the constant dashing from one locale to another and back again within a day or two each time a new bit of info was revealed was too distracting and unrealistic. I doubt people would have bounced around like that in the early twentieth century. Also I found the respect shown to and independence shown by the main character a bit too modern for the times. Perhaps it was due to her family’s stature and her profession and intense war experiences. But she was met and listened to even by total strangers. I’d like to think it was like that back then. But I have my doubts. Overall I give the novel four stars due to the strong and intelligent main character, the intriguing plot, the beautifully described country settings, and the believable war scenarios (the tragedy described at the start of the book was very realistic). I will try the next book. But I hope it’s less “frantic” with its locales.

"A Duty to the Dead: A Bess Crawford Mystery" by Charles Todd is similar to the author's Inspector Ian Rutledge mysteries in high quality of writing, complex plot, and must-finish-the-book-before-I-go-to-bed suspense.In the Rutledge books, the reader is relentlessly led to the World War One trenches, where all the reader's senses are assailed: The terrifying noise of mortars and machine-gun fire, the mud, the blood, the bodies, the screams in war, the dying moans, the stench, the suicide dashes over the top into No Man's Land. The brave and futile necessity at the Front of risking the few to save the thousands. All the horribleness of war.Rutledge had been in the middle of it, and bore the physical and mental scars. Shell shock (the precursor to today's Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome) left him with his wholly illusory psychological companion, named Hamish, the ghost of one of his best men. This ghost challenged everything Rutledge did or thought of doing in his return to duty as a Scotland Yard inspector. Hamish was a handy foil for the author to use in advancing the action.Charles Todd deprives himself of this literary advantage in "A Duty to the Dead." Bess Crawford is a nurse stationed as near to the front lines as you can get. She and her fellow nurses and doctors daily and hourly receive the wounded and dying men from the battlefield, with all their battle dirtiness and bloodiness and immediate need for care to save their lives, if possible. Wounds spurting blood, feverish comas, projectile vomiting, explosive diarrhea, limbs blown off, eyes blinded. Who takes care of all these essentially revolting conditions? Who cleans them up? Who addresses them? Bess is among those who do. She and the others work to exhaustion in longer than 24-hour days.I cannot call "A Duty to the Dead" a happy book. Not a book that leaves you happy. Nor can I think of anyone in it who is portrayed as happy (with one very minor exception). That's not really the point, is it? England, at war, is a grim place.Bess volunteered for the service she is in. Occasional relief, and a brief few days break to return to England, is afforded when she and other nurses get to accompany groups of stabilized soldiers on a hospital ship going back home. Crosses painted red on the ships do not guarantee safety from German submarines. Bess is on one of those ships when it is torpedoed. She survives, but with a debilitating broken arm. During the time of healing, she decides to carry out the dying wish of one of the soldiers back at the Front. He had requested that she deliver an important but mysterious message to his family. Because she admired the man, she had promised, and decided now to do it.For fear of revealing too much, I will just say that the sizeable family Bess finds at his home is full of secrets, including hidden resentment, rejection, murder, favoritism, deception, misdiagnosis, and other lesser and greater symptoms. The resolution is lengthy (over 300 pages) and will satisfy any need for complexity. A happy read? Are you kidding? Yet I look forward to the next Bess Crawford mystery.

Informative about World War One 1914-1918 in Britain and the after effects.

I really enjoyed this book, but found the back and forth approach of solving the mysteries was a bit tedious. Otherwise it was well written and a good page-turner.

This is an author I have just discovered and I absolutely love the setting - 1st World War - and the style of writing. A most engaging story and so realistic. I Shall be reading the others int his series.

A good read, one of the best Bess Crawford mysteries. However, like all, it rambles a bit as if author is hesitant to bring it to an end.

Once again the weakness of the Todd writing team seems to be that they are unable to write an ending that isn't somewhat frenzied and also implausible. The mystery, once revealed,leaves you nonplussed how to how on earth events would have turned this way. But however unsatisfactory this may seem, the rest is so good that I am becoming a fan. I read this one in twenty four hours as I just couldn't put it down. Bess Crawford 's hospital ship, Britannic, encounters a German mine in the mediterranean that nearly sends them all to a watery grave. Having suffered a broken arm during this episode she is convalescing in Britain and decides to finally fulfill a promise. A few weeks before, a young officer for whom she had come to feel more than she ought to, had, on his dying bed, made her promise to repeat a certain message to one of his brothers.She was to tell him that he had lied for his mother's sake but that he wished things to be set right. When she is received by the Graham family, no one seems to take the dying man's wishes seriously and they even seem to fail to understand what he may have meant. And yet, there is a half brother not five miles away in a lunatic asylum, who has been shut up in there for over 14 years. As a child he is supposed to have butchered a young woman and has been locked away ever since. What if he had had nothing to do with this crime? And this is where Bess will have to come into action and where the Todd writing team will have us on tenterhooks, reading page after page until all is revealed. Not perfect as I have written before but still very entertaining and to be highly recommended!