An Impartial Witness

I quite like this series which is set during World War I and has an army nurse as the sleuth. It's probably not as realistic as some other historical novels set during WWI but the loss of life and limb is certainly very evident.

Bess has a short leave in England in the summer of 1917 after accompanying some wounded soldiers from the battlefields of Europe. Her main charge, Lieutenant Meriweather Evanson, was badly burned but he kept his hopes alive by clinging to the picture of his wife,Marjorie. So Bess was very surprised to see Marjorie Evanson clinging to another man and visibly upset in the train station when she arrived in London. She was even more shocked when she heard the news that Marjorie had been murdered later that night. show more When Scotland Yard asked for witnesses who might have seen Mrs. Evanson, Bess felt it was her duty to tell them about seeing her in the train station. Although she is implored to leave the investigation to the police Bess continues to try to identify the man Marjorie was with. This leads her to cross paths with Marjorie's sister, Victoria, and with Michael Hart, a man who had been a close friend of Marjorie's. Michael is convalescing with a wounded shoulder but suspicion that he murdered Marjorie results in him standing trial. Bess is sure he couldn't have stabbed Marjorie because of his injury but as time runs out she still hasn't been able to find the real murderer.

I was a little surprised by all the motor vehicle travel that Bess and others undertook. I would have thought that petrol would have been rationed as it was during World War II. Google didn't find any references to petrol rationing during WWI so perhaps it wasn't. I suppose the war effort was less mechanized in this war. show less

Great characters, believable fiction, extremely vivid setting -- this series continues to knock it out of the park for me. I particularly like Bess' resistance to romance and frustration when everyone assumes that she has fallen for one of the suspects, but I suspect at some point she and Simon will figure it out. It's a tiny bit formulaic (patient draws her into a convoluted murder plot, only recourse to proving the bad guy is to be attacked) -- but it's still a vastly different story than the first book, and I actually really liked that there was no guarantee that Scotland Yard would see the attack her way -- again with the realism. Good stuff.

An Impartial Witness - Todd
Audio performance by Rosalyn Landor
3 stars

Once again, Bess Crawford becomes involved with the family tragedy of a former patient. The whole premise of her over-involvement is weak and remains my biggest problem with this series.That is the unavoidable difficulty with series that involve an amatuer detective. Why is it that they keep bumping into so many murders? In this case, Bess Crawford’s entree into detective work is her ongoing role as a WW1 combat nurse.

Bess moves around a lot. She’s serves on the continent in a variety of dangerous locations. She goes back and forth across the English Channel helping to transport the wounded. And, she spends quite a bit of time on leave in London and beyond, where show more her familial contacts allow her to socialize with the upper echelons of military society. No wonder Scotland Yard needs her to solve their murder cases. She reminds me of Nancy Drew.

I like the historical atmosphere of this series. I wonder which of the Todd writing team is responsible for the battle scenes. In the first book, the sinking of the Britannic was the most compelling scene. This book included great detail of combat operating theaters and a suspenseful German air attack on a retreating medical team. I will forget the details of the murder mystery, but the historical details will stay with me. show less

First Line: As my train pulled into London, I looked out at the early summer rain and was glad to see the dreary day had followed me from Hampshire.

It is the early summer of 1917 and nurse Bess Crawford has returned to England from France with a convoy of gravely wounded soldiers. One of the men is a badly burned young pilot who wears a photo of his wife pinned to his tunic. He clings to life solely because of his love for her.

In a London train station Bess happens to witness the extremely emotional farewell between a woman and an officer. When the woman turns her head, Bess recognizes her. She is the wife of the young, burned pilot, which means that the officer is most definitely not her husband.

Back in France, Bess happens to see a show more newspaper article in which Scotland Yard is asking for any information about the woman in the sketch. The sketch is of the pilot's wife, the woman at the train station. Bess feels that she must become involved in the case because of the young pilot's love for his wife and because of the fact that she seems to be the last person to see the woman alive. It won't be long at all before Bess realizes just how dangerous her quest for the truth really is.

For me, the enjoyment in reading the books in this series comes not from deducing the murderer, but from immersing myself in the time period and in the character of Bess herself. Living in an era (as I do) in which it seems no one wants to claim responsibility for anything, Bess's sense of duty and responsibility is quite refreshing. She may have a stubborn and slightly reckless streak, but she's got an excellent safety net in her family-- and she knows how to use her common sense.

The mother-son writing duo known as Charles Todd has a long-running series set in the same era which centers around Ian Rutledge, a shell-shocked veteran who returns to his job at Scotland Yard. That series is also very good, but after a while, I tired of Rutledge being haunted by the ill-tempered spirit of a soldier shot for desertion.

Bess has no such haunts, for which I am grateful, and it seems that, if she finally becomes aware of someone right underneath her nose, she may have a relationship to help keep her grounded in future books. I like Bess, and I look forward to reading more books in the series to see if I'm right about her prospects.

If you've read Todd's Ian Rutledge series or Jacqueline Winspear's Maisie Dobbs series about a former World War I nurse as private investigator in 1930's London, you should enjoy this series about Bess Crawford. show less

For those who enjoy the period of World War I Britain, but grow weary of the myopic heaviness that inevitably envelops protagonists of mysteries set during the period, this installment of the Bess Crawford mysteries (the second in the series) will be a refreshing and engaging read.

Bess Crawford is bright, friendly, intelligent, close with her parents and friends and, though she feels the weight of the gruesome war she sees, is not yet totally jaded from it.

While she does border--just a bit, mind you--on being a bit of a Mary Sue, she is just overly-emotionally involved with the people in the cases she investigates and makes just enough mistakes to not get dull.

The plot of an Impartial Witness is complex without becoming tedious, a show more trademark skill of Todd's.

What begins as a fairly straightforward mystery soon becomes a deliciously complex Gordian knot of red herrings, complex motives, unanswered questions and the hallmark storytelling of every Todd novel.

The storytelling itself, in terms of period description, dialogue and character development, is phenomenal as always. With a wide array of characters, Todd creates a subtle tapestry from many disparate threads that reveal an impressive picture of lives colliding in the end.

Yet again, I was immersed in Bess's world--exhausted on the Front while tending to shredded boys, but still with niggling questions over the murder in London, home with her family and attempting to enjoy the respite (but also attempting to leverage the time to learn more about the murdered woman's life, friends and family), and having tea with a friend in the flat the women keep.

Bess' observations about the toll war takes on marriages--but from the unfaithful women's point of view, not the typical lonely soldier--is extremely well done in that explores the complexities of those infidelities, rather than just shrug it off as, "It's war; people are lonely; women have needs."
Yet Todd never forgets that Bess herself has never been married, and thus her opinions on the issue are formed through the observation of her friends. And while Bess acknowledges the grief and pain that can be involved, she is not automatically empathetic, a fact I found I enjoyed immensely as it made her seem more real.

Another remarkable thing so far about the Bess Crawford novels is Todd's ability to keep Crawford completely unaware of the fact that she is, indeed, investigating a murder. She sees herself as nurse who unwillingly gets embroiled in situations, which thus far have happened to involve murder.

Her motivation isn't solely justice or accountability to the law, however. Often, she merely has a compassionate interest in those around her, or the victim, and thus needs to know the truth and see justice done to settle herself as much as the victims' families or loved ones. Her deep sense of judgement becomes a motivator a bit later, though its never entirely absent.

As a civilian, when Bess works with Scotland Yard, it is as a mistrusted civilian, a refreshing change from most novels of the genre.

The story doesn't click along quite as quickly as the first one did, but provided you're in the mood for a good, solid, stay-up-too-late read, it's fine.

In an Impartial Witness, Bess Crawford, a nurse during World War I who is also the daughter of a very high-ranking retired Colonel, inadvertently stumbles upon one of the lesser acts (or consequences) of war in a crowded train station: the wife of a soldier engaged in an impassioned and desperate discussion with another solder who is not her husband.

Bess recognizes the woman in the train station immediately because her picture was pinned to her husband's chest the entire way his burned body was transported from France to England, and Bess was one of the nurses who cared for him the entire time.

Charles Todd, the mother-and-son writing behind the Ian Rutledge mysteries (one of my favorite series of all time), have successfully created a new series that is truly all its own. show less

After reading this second in the series, I struggle to recall why I wanted to continue beyond the first book. In this novel, Bess comes across as a busybody who should have been arrested for interfering with an investigation after being told multiple times by police to leave it alone. Instead, she inserts herself, repeatedly, without having any background information and manipulates her way into the lives of others. While her desire for justice is admirable, she’s a nurse and not an inspector. Her efforts result in an attack on someone who might otherwise have been left alone and in the death of another character (not right, no matter how unlikeable that character was).

I don’t recall her being so out of control and meddlesome on show more the last story I read, but it was practically leaping from the page in this one. show less

I like this series but this book is not as good as others. Bess Crawford works to prove a man innocent of murder before he hangs. The extra characters were largely unlikeable and the story dragged a bit for me. The ending was full of hope so I didn't dislike it.