An Impartial Witness

Starred review from July 5, 2010
Set in the summer of 1917, Todd's excellent second mystery featuring British nurse Bess Crawford (after 2009's A Duty to the Dead) smoothly blends realistic characters with an intricate plot. When Bess accompanies Lt. Meriwether Evanson, a severe burn victim, from the Continent to England, she's surprised to spot the pilot's supposedly devoted wife, Marjorie, crying on another man's shoulder at a train station. After returning to saving lives under German fire in France, Bess is stunned to read in a newspaper that Marjorie has been stabbed to death in London. Soon after, the depressed lieutenant commits suicide by cutting his own throat. Unable to resist involving herself in the murder investigation, Bess seeks to identify Marjorie's unknown companion, the possible killer. In addition to supplying a challenging puzzle, Todd (a mother-son writing team) does a superb job of capturing the feel of the battlefield and the emotional toll taken on those waiting back home for a loved one's return.

With emotional intensity and studied elegance, Rosalyn Landor guides listeners to 1917, when England's aristocracy is facing the end of innocence and British military forces are being dealt their bloodiest hand against the Germans. Landor's voice and manner are ideal choices to tell the story of Bess Crawford, a nurse tending the critically wounded in France. One of Crawford's patients, a burn victim, has kept his wife's photograph as a beloved talisman. So Crawford is surprised to see the woman from the photo with another man at a London train station. Crawford later learns that within hours of seeing the woman at the train station, she was murdered. Driven by curiosity and principle, Bess is compelled to discover who murdered the wife. S.E.S. (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine