A Duty to the Dead: A Bess Crawford Mystery by Charles Todd

                For many nights I stayed up far too late reading this book.  I knew I should go to sleep, but all I wanted to do was keep reading.  Eventually my eyes would start to drop and I had to put the book away so as not to lose my place.  It was always disappointing when this happened because all I wanted to do was read.

                I found A Duty to the Dead in the Bas Bleu catalog.  Well, I sort of found it that way.  What I actually found was another book in the Bess Crawford mystery series, but I did not know that at the time.  When I got the book home from the library I figured out pretty quickly what I had reserved was not the first book in the series.  Since I always have to start at the beginning, I looked up the first book and reserved that from the library.  The first book ended up being A Duty to the Dead.  Now that I have read it, I am excited to read the one that I returned as well as all the others in between.

                Bess Crawford is a nurse in World War I.  While serving on board the Britannic, the ship is attacked.  Bess manages to escape with only a broken arm, but it keeps her from going back into service until she is healed.  With her time off, Bess decides it is time to deliver the message entrusted to her by a soldier on his deathbed.  Arthur Graham was on the mend, but he suddenly took a turn for the worst.  With only a short time left in his life, Arthur gave Bess a cryptic message meant for his brother.  Bess knows she should have delivered the message long ago, but something has made her hold off.  Now after her close call, Bess realizes it is time to perform her duty and deliver the message she promised she would.            

                Despite her parents’ objections, Bess takes herself to Kent to find Jonathan Graham, Arthur’s brother and the intended recipient of the message.  He, and only he, is supposed to hear the message, but this does not stop his mother, Mrs. Graham, from trying to pry it out of her.  She wants to know what her son’s last words were and is insistent that Bess knows more than she is telling.  The truth is, Bess does not know any more than what she already told Jonathan, and no matter how many times Mrs. Graham questions her that is not going to change.              

                The trip to Kent was supposed to be a short one, but Bess quickly finds her nursing skills are needed, despite Mrs. Graham’s protests.  She helps with a suicidal soldier suffering from shell shock as well as nurse’s Arthur’s half brother, Peregrine, back to health.  Peregrine lives in an asylum because of a murder he committed as a teenager.  When he comes down with pneumonia the asylum determines they can no longer care for him and send him home.  At first Mrs. Graham tries to refuse Peregrine as she wants nothing to do with him, but her cousin Robert convinces her to take Peregrine in.  He is expected to die, but Bess manages to nurse him back to health.  Once it is clear Peregrine is on the mend, Mrs. Graham sends him back to the asylum, where he manages to escape.  No one knows where he is, but when they cannot find Peregrine, everyone figures him for dead.  At least they do until he shows up in Bess’s London flat.  Peregrine can’t remember what happened the day he committed the murder, but now that he is healthy he is determined to figure it out.  He has decided that Bess is going to help him uncover the truth of that day, whether she wants to or not. 

                  Clearly I really liked this book; otherwise I wouldn’t have stayed up so late reading it. The one problem I ran into with it was there were so many different characters I sometimes had to take a moment to remember who was who. A similar thing happened with the locations. Bess hopped around a lot and I occasionally had to pause in order to remember where Bess came from, where she was, and why. In the end these were such minor frustrations that they did nothing to hinder my enjoyment of the book. I loved reading about Bess and think she is such a great character. Peregrine is pretty good too, even though I don’t like that he forced Bess into helping him. One of my favorite characters, however, is hardly in the book at all. His name is Sergeant Major Simon Brandon. He works for Bess’s father and looks out for Bess as well. Simon seems really sweet. I think he and Bess would make a very interesting match, although I do not know their age difference and there was not a hint of romance between the two in the book. There were obvious signs that Simon cared about Bess and her wellbeing, but that could be out of duty and since they have known each other for so long. I’m not sure where their relationship is going to go, possibly nowhere, but I am interested to find out.