An Impartial Witness by Charles Todd

I'm glad I tried An Impartial Witness, second in the Bess Crawford series, by the mother-and-son writing team of Charles Todd.  Although I was disappointed in A Duty to the Dead, this novel was much better.  Not as good as the Ian Rutledge series by the same authors and not as good Jacqueline Winspear's series featuring Maisie Dobbs, but an enjoyable read.

Bess Crawford is a WWI nurse, now stationed in France.  After accompanying severely injured men back to England, she happens to notice a distressed woman at the train station and recognizes her as the wife of one of the men for whom she has cared.

On her return to France, Bess reads a newspaper and learns that the woman was murdered on the same day that Bess saw her taking an emotional leave from the young officer (who was not her husband).  She volunteers her information to Scotland Yard by letter and becomes drawn into the case by her own curiosity.

There are a lot of coincidences and frequent leaves from her nursing station in France, but Bess manages to unravel the mystery with perseverance.  None of the characters are especially well-developed and the historical detail is skimpy, but it is a nice little historical mystery.

Don't forget to check this post for the give away.

Fiction.  Mystery/ Historical Fiction.  2010.  352 pages.