The Shattered Tree

June 13, 2016
Not even a life-threatening bullet wound can stop Bess Crawford in bestseller Todd’s compelling eighth whodunit featuring the dogged English nurse (after 2015’s A Pattern of Lies). At an aid station in France in October 1918, Bess encounters an injured, unidentified French lieutenant, who yells in fluent German after being attacked by a fellow patient, a Scotsman. Though Bess’s matron suggests that the Frenchman is from German-speaking Alsace-Lorraine, Bess isn’t so sure. Two weeks later, Bess is in the trenches when a German sniper shoots her in the side. Sent to Paris to recuperate, Bess pursues the matter of the French officer’s identity at her peril. She finds an ally in old acquaintance Captain Barkley, an American who’s ostensibly in the city searching for deserters. Bess keeps pushing her luck, but Todd (the mother-son writing team of Caroline and Charles Todd) makes her persistence plausible and delivers an interesting answer to the mystery. Agent: Jane Chelius, Jane Chelius Literary Agency.

August 1, 2016

In her eighth outing (after A Pattern of Lies), World War I nurse Bess Crawford spots on the streets of Paris a former French Army patient now wearing an American uniform. She had previously witnessed this wounded soldier speaking German. Driven to investigate, Bess sets out, putting her life in danger.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2016
Bess Crawford's eighth adventure again highlights the battlefield nurse's dangerous curiosity and implacable fortitude under the extreme conditions of WWI. Wounded in a trench while assessing a patient, Bess is shipped off to Paris to convalesce, giving her time to investigate an injured French officer who might not be all he seems. Despite her own injury, Bess tracks her quarry while also taking in Paris nightlife with her father's military aide. The trail of clues leads Bess into a morass of family relationships and a horrendous murder committed by a child 10 years earlier. As always, Todd's characters come to life, no matter how small their role in the story, and the surprising denouement arrives all too soon. Todd vividly describes wartime horrors and the heroic medical personnel who risk their lives to save the wounded. Fans of Jacqueline Winspear's Maisie Dobbs series will enjoy quick-witted Bess Crawford, and readers who liked Mackenzie Ford's Gifts of War (2009) will appreciate the balance of emotion and historical detail in this quick read.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)