A Cruel Deception

August 12, 2019
Set in 1919, bestseller Todd’s sluggish 11th whodunit featuring British nurse Bess Crawford (after 2018’s A Forgotten Place) finds Bess trying to figure out what direction her postwar career should take while serving in a Wiltshire surgical clinic. She’s summoned to London to meet with the chief of nursing, Mrs. Minton, whose son, Lawrence, is in Paris as part of the British delegation attending the peace conference. A friend has informed Mrs. Minton that, despite Lawrence’s contrary assurances, he hasn’t been attending meetings. Bess agrees to travel to France and look into Lawrence’s circumstances. When she finally tracks down Lawrence in a small village, she discovers he’s addicted to laudanum and plagued by somnambulism. During one encounter while he was sleepwalking, Lawrence cries out not to be judged, because he “tried.” The source of his guilt is disclosed only toward the end, making it anticlimactic and giving Bess less time to do actual sleuthing. This is a subpar entry in a generally superior series. Agent: Lisa Gallagher, DeFiore and Co.

October 1, 2019

By 1919, the army hospitals are closing in England, and Sister Bess Crawford expects a reassignment when she's called to the nursing headquarters. Instead, the matron asks her to take on a personal case. Matron's son, Lawrence, was to participate in the peace talks in Paris, but he hasn't been in meetings. Worried about Lawrence, who was wounded in the war and, like so many other soldiers, and might now have a drug dependency, she asks Bess to go to Paris to track down her son. Bess's father, who is involved in the peace talks, is too busy to help her as she travels from Paris to St. Ives, searching for Lawrence. It becomes a dangerous job for Bess, as she finds a man haunted by his past and threatened by an unknown enemy who even follows Bess to Paris and tries to kill her. VERDICT The 11th "Bess Crawford" historical mystery, following A Forgotten Place, will appeal to readers of the series and possibly fans of Jacqueline Winspear's "Maisie Dobbs" books. However, most readers will find it slow going and plodding with little mystery. [See Prepub Alert, 2/25/19.]--Lesa Holstine, Evansville Vanderburgh P.L., IN

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 15, 2019
Five months after the Armistice, nursing sister Bess Crawford (A Forgotten Place, 2018, etc.) gets yet another painful reminder that for all too many, the Great War has never ended. Plucked from her clinic in Wiltshire, Bess is volunteered by Matron Helena Minton for a very personal errand: to travel to Paris and ascertain why the Matron's son, Lt. Lawrence Minton, hasn't appeared for weeks at the peace talks to which he's been assigned as a minor attaché. Is he still suffering the aftereffects of the wound he got last October? Has he become dependent on the drugs given him to fight the effects of his injury? Matron wants to find out quietly without pursuing the official inquiries that could end her son's army career with the regiment of Bess' father, Col. Richard Crawford. Arriving in France, Bess follows Lawrence's trail to the village of St. Ives, where he's living with schoolteacher Marina Lascelles, a family friend whose father's life he once saved. Bess immediately sees the signs of his addiction to laudanum, a debilitating appetite that's clearly incapacitated him for diplomatic service. She's even more concerned when she realizes that the reason he started taking the drug was to escape his crippling sense of guilt over yet another of the wartime traumas in which Todd specializes. After many episodes of conflict, self-torment, and uncontrollable behavior, Dr. Michel Moreau, Bess' nominal host in Paris while she secretly takes up residence in St. Ives, suggests the radical step of hypnotizing Lawrence to recover the searing memories he's suppressed. Lawrence proves a ready subject, but several sessions only gradually reveal the story of "the angel" that's been tormenting him, and even once he's revealed the story, the truth behind it remains to be disclosed. Sensitive, beautifully written, disconcertingly familiar in all but the circumstantial details of the underlying horror, and much too long.

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Rosalyn Landor, who has performed the nurse Bess Crawford mystery series since its inception, can be trusted to deliver a thoroughly satisfying listen. Her rich and expressive voice has the range to create believable male and female characters, including Americans, and she colors personalities affectingly. This eleventh book, set during the post-WWI armistice talks, finds Bess in France on a private mission to locate her nursing supervisor's son, who has disappeared from his work at the talks. The man she finally finds is damaged and in danger. Bess launches herself satisfyingly into the melee. The rather far-fetched plot is, nonetheless, diverting, and supported with interesting information on everything from opium to firearms. Throughout, Landor's knowledgeable performance adds an extra dollop of pleasure. A.C.S. � AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine