A Duty to the Dead (Bess Crawford Series #1)

A Mystery in line with Massie Dobbs series

I have been a devoted reader of the Massie Dobbs series by Jacqueline Winspear. A Duty to the Dead is of the same genre. The heroine Bess Crawford is very likable. Hopefully there will be more in this series. The book held me from the beginning to the end. Well written. Very unusual that a mother and son would write such an engaging book.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Charles Todd has started another winning historical mystery series.

In 1916, British army nurse Bess Crawford is injured when the hospital ship she is on is hit. However while she recovers she promised dying soldier Arthur Graham she would deliver his last words to his brother Jonathan that he lied for their mother's sake.

Believing strongly she owes A DUTY TO THE DEAD, Bess heads to Kent to transmit the message. She learns that another brother of Arthur, Peregrine, has been locked up in an asylum since he was a young teen for murdering the housemaid; he is also dying from pneumonia and desperately needs expert nursing; Bess agrees to provide it and after spending some time with her new patient concludes he is sane though he has selective amnesia not recalling the tragedy that condemned him. As she tends to Peregrine, another patient of hers commits suicide, but something about the death disturbs Bess. When Peregrine recovers much of his health, he flees taking Bess with him as he tries to regain his lost memory of what happened to Lily. Bess further learns of other suspicious deaths since Peregrine was locked away that makes her suspect other family members including her favorite patient, the late Arthur.

Although Inspector Rutledge takes a needed rest, fans will enjoy this strong WWI village amateur sleuth starring a spunky lead character, reminiscent of Winspear's Maisie Dobbs early years, caught in the middle of a family drama. The story line brings out the horrors of war through Bess' ailing and dying patients while the whodunit is cleverly devised so the audience and the nurse will keep guessing until the climax. Charles Todd has started another winning historical mystery series.

Harriet Klausner

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Really Enjoyed This

The stories, like the Ian Rutledge series by the same authors, are well written, with sympathetic characters and good plots. These take place during WWI in England. Bess Crawford is a nurse alternately at the front and back in England on leave. One character overlaps in both series. I liked these well enough to be reading my way through them and passing them on to a friend who also loves them.

OK

Good period details. Plot a little too complicated.

Great read! by author Charles Todd, #1 book in this series

A wonderful tale of hidden 'family secrets' during the WWI timeframe.

Bess Crawford nurses a soldier who tells her something before his death. With severe wounds, the man dies and she has a 'duty to the dead'. She ventures out of her way to see his family and try to deliver the message. But instead, the family does not know what she is talking about!

Integrity, honor, respect of others is the underlying theme of the book. A good reminder to have for the 21st Century.

The end is a twist. A must read for summer 2012! I am now reading the second book of this series, 'An Impartial Witness'.

Excellent read

I really enjoyed this book. Very suspenseful. Will keep you guessing till the end!

A NEW PROTAGONIST; ANOTHER FUN READ

The Mother-Son writing team has a new, very different sleuth in the same World War I era . Their young nurse is a departure from their war veteran, Inspector Rutledge, who continually contends with a mind damaged by the war as he solves murders for an unappreciative superior. She also lives and works in that time of change from the more rigid social structures of Edwardian Britain to the developing social openness and awareness of post-World War I. And she asserts herself with determination to set right what she sees to be wrong. As in the Inspector Rutledge series, the story's setting is brought to life by the author. For people who enjoy reading about that time and reading the intricate and colorful mysteries of Charles Todd but occasionally wish for adventures without Rutledge's baggage from the war, the new heroine provides an opportunity to see the same locations and institutions through feminine, less-troubled eyes while solving the same manner of challenging mystery.

A Beautiful Book About A Promise Kept

This was a great book. An easy one to follow and an easy one to fall in love with the main character, a nurse who survives her ship sinking to keep a promise she made to a dying patient. She is superbly written and I wait anxiously for Book 2. It is so easy to read you feel like you are there with the nurse. Worth reading.

Mother/son writing team debut new character

I find it odd that a mother/son writing team who live on the east coast of the United States have chosen to tell stories about England in the early 1900s, however they seem to make it work. Writing under the pen name Charles Todd, this duo has a bestselling series about Ian Rutledge and is venturing out with a new character, war nurse Bess Crawford in "A Duty to the Dead."
Bess is on active duty during WWI on a hospital ship when a dying soldier makes her promise to take a message back to his family, "Tell Jonathan that I lied. I did it for Mother's sake. But it has to be set right," he tells her.
Soon after, the ship she is on is sunk by a mine and Bess makes it out alive, although suffering from a broken arm. During her convalescence she decides she needs to deliver the dying soldier's message to its rightful recipient. Bess's father, a highly decorated retired soldier, worries about her injuries, as well as her wanting to carry out her new mission. Against her father's wishes, Bess travels by train to the town where the family lives, then is taken by horse drawn carriage to their home.
Upon arriving, she is taken directly to her room, where she retires for the evening. The next day she meets the dead soldier's mother as well as two of his three brothers. She decides to wait until she can speak with his brother Jonathan privately to deliver the message. While waiting for the appropriate moment, she finds much time to roam around the town and meet various townfolk. She loves to talk, and tries to gather background on the soldier's family as she meets people. She also gets dragged into a situation where the local doctor is treating a wounded soldier who has returned home and is suffering from shell shock.
When Bess finally is able to deliver her message, Jonathan acts like he has no idea what it means. Bess is disappointed to have gone through all this for naught, and decides to leave the following day. However, as fate would have it, the third brother falls sick and is sent home from the mental asylum where he had been institutionalized since childhood, in order to die in his home. Bess ends up staying on to make sure he dies comfortably.
Bess ends up nursing this brother back to health, beyond anyone's expectations, and when he is lucid he tells her things that pique her curiosity and make her decide to begin an investigation into what the dying soldier really meant with his message.
An extremely slow-starting story, this turned out to be worth the read. I would hope that in further installations of this character, the author(s) would get to the point of the story much more quickly, as the real mystery of this book didn't reveal itself until over halfway through.

A great new series by a great writing duo

I have been reading the books of Charles Todd since I picked up the first one several years ago. I always look forward to them eagerly. Ian Rutledge is a character you can admire while sympathizing with his pain. I have already read "The Red Door," and will be impatient to read the next installment.

Bess Crawford is a breath of fresh air and, like Rutledge, easy to like and admire. These characters feel very human to me and very real. I think, eventually, the charactes will overlap (we already have seen Bess's aunt in "The Red Door.") It's a nice touch.

I strongly recommend all of Charles Todd's books.

I have also recommended Anne Perry's "We Shall Sleep", just one in her WWI series. I recommend them all. "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society" was a wonderful surprise and a terrific story. I have learned more about WWI in these books than I ever learned in school.

Brilliant

I don't read a lot of historical fiction and I've never read anything by Charles Todd. After reading A Duty to the Dead, I have to say that I've been missing out. Todd is a brilliant writer. He weaves an old-fashioned mystery around a World War I nurse. Todd does a masterful job of immersing the reader in the characters' world. You will feel like you've stepped out of the 21st century and back into the early 1900s. A truly enjoyable read.

COMPELLING, ATMOSPHERIC, INSIGHTFUL

The mother and son writing team known as Charles Todd has written 11 highly acclaimed Ian Rutledge mysteries, each recognized for scrupulous attention to historic detail, careful plotting, well developed characters, and riveting psychological suspense. The same is true of A DUTY TO THE DEAD in which Todd introduces a new series featuring Bess Crawford.

While Bess lived in 1916 she's more than a match for any contemporary mystery heroine. The daughter of a highly principled and equally highly disciplined officer she inherited these qualities in large doses. It is 1916 and Bess follows in her father's footsteps by serving as a nurse in the Great War. During training she is cautioned about becoming too fond of her patients. "They are yours to comfort, yours to heal, but not yours to dream about." Nonetheless, Arthur Graham found a special place in her heart, and she made a deathbed promise to him, a vow to take a brief, rather cryptic message to his brother, Jonathan.

However, it is some time before she can keep that promise as when our story opens she is aboard the ill-fated hospital ship Britannic. Todd's description of the explosion that rocks the ship and the ensuing sinking is intense, gripping. Bess suffers a broken arm but does manage to find a place in a lifeboat and is eventually sent to England for recoveryr. It is then that she goes to Arthur's home in Kent.

While at first she is welcomed warmly Bess is astute; she recognizes a sorely fragmented family. There is Arthur's widowed mother, a domineering matriarch. Jonathan is a lieutenant who has suffered a facial wound, another brother, Timothy, who was born with a clubfoot and appears bitter because he could not join the service. A third brother, Peregrine, is at the heart of the mystery; he has been held in a mental asylum since the age of fourteen - a confinement that we learn was arranged by his mother. To compound matters there is the mysterious Robert, a cousin, who is omnipresent.

While a guest in the Graham's home Bess is confronted with numerous challenges, not the least of which is assisting the local doctor in caring for a shell shocked soldier. She learns the matrix of small village life - secrets kept, gossip rampant, an aversion to strangers.

A DUTY TO THE DEAD is an atmospheric rendering of wartime England, a sterling suspense tale and an unforgettable picture of the horrors of war.

- Gail Cooke

One of his best!

I have read all of Charles Todd's books and have never been disappointed.

Welcome addition

After reading the entire Inspector Ian Rutledge series, I was ready for this newest addition from Charles Todd. A female detective who doesn't disappoint set in one of my favorite era's. Enjoy!

This is a GREAT read.

Ian Rutledge of Todds other novels always keeps me wanting to read more so I wondered about this new charater, to my delight she did and I look forward to the next one in the series.

A Duty To The Dead is the addition of a new main character by Charles Todd, the mother/son team who brings WWI England alive.

Charles Todd, the talented mother/son writing team whose eleven Inspector Ian Rutledge mysteries are so popular, have created a new character who is as unique as Rutledge.
When a series is successful, it's a challenge to create a new character that will be as popular as the currently running series. Bess Crawford, an English nurse serving on the battlefields of WWI France, sees demons but in a different way from Rutledge (Todd's other series character). Crawford's creation in this book is a great introduction and will provide Todd's readers with another major character.
Bess Crawford has a crush on a dying soldier she's nursing. She promises to take a verbal message to the soldier's brother. On her cruise home, the ship sinks (torpedo? mine?) and she's injured as she's evacuating the ship.
As she recuperates at home, Bess travels to the dead soldier's home and encounters death, not to mention two step-brothers who seem unfeeling about their brother's death and a strange stepmother.
Bess has to solve several murders, endure the contempt of the local constabulary, challenge the social mores of the era, and face her own demons as she realizes England is not the calm she envisioned when she was in France.
A Duty to the Dead doesn't have the deep, dark psychological pinnings of the Ian Rutledge series but it's written with the same tight plotting, believable characters, and historical research that will make Charles Tood fans happy.
This book was read over a weekend. I couldn't put it down and I look forward to other Bess Crawford books. Charles Todd books are intriguing and educational, as well as fun to read. A Duty to the Dead is a wonderful addition for Charles Todd fans and anyone interested in WWI.

Everything isn't always what it seems

This story introduces Bess Crawford, a WWI nurse and investigator.
Bess is serving on the red cross ship Britannic when it hits a mine and sinks. Thirty men die and Bess suffers a broken arm in the explosion.
Bess is given medical leave because of her arm and returns to London.

She had cared for a wounded man, Amborse Graham was had been getting better but his wound turned septic and he died. He asked Bess to deliver a message to his brother. "Tell Jonathan that I lied. I did it for Mother's sake. But it has to be set right."

Bess travesl to Kent and meets the Graham family. Jonathan is also home from the war, revovering from a wound to his head. His mother is there and brother, Tim, who has a club foot and is declared medically unfit for military service. Also there is cousin, Robert Douglas. Bess learns that there is still another brother, Peregrine who is institutionalized.

A local doctor learns that Bess is visiting and asks her help with one of his cases. Another veteran is home from the war and suffering from what he has gone through. Ted Booker has shell shock from seeing his twin brother die in front of him. In one of the more compasionate, touching scenes, Bess talks to Ted as if she's from his unit, she gets him to calm down and it seems to help.

The family learns that Peregrine has pnemonia and cannot be treated at the institute. They want to send him home. Mrs. Graham refuses to have him in the house but Robert persuades her to let him come. Bess offers to care for him and Mrs. Graham warns Bess that the reason for her son's confinement is that he murdered a servant when he was fourteen and didn't know hiw mind.

Peregrine recovers but Bess is saddened to learn that Ted Booker committed suicide. Since he seemed to be recovering, both Bess and the doctor think something might be amiss.

Back in London, Bess is surprised with a visitor. Peregrine is at her flat. The family was going to send him back to the institute but he escaped. He wants Bess' help to try to find out what went on when it was said that he killed the girl. Reluctantly, Bess agrees and they proceed to relive the events that surrounded the murder of Lily Mercer.

This is a well written cozy novel. The pace is appropriate and the authors get the reader involved with the story. Bess is a heroic and promising character, Peregrine is a sympathetic character and the plot is original and believable. It is a lesson to see how facts can be shaded to give a completely different menaing and that could change a person's life.

Recommended.

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