Set in 1919, bestseller Todd's stellar 13th Bess Crawford mystery (after 2021's An Irish Hostage) sends the former WWI front-line nurse to Yorkshire. There, a cousin of Bess's has a friend, Lillian Taylor, the companion to Lady Beatrice, who's scheduled to have her gallbladder removed. The surgeon insists that Lady Beatrice have a nurse in attendance on her discharge from hospital, but she's refused. Lillian wants Bess to try to change Lady Beatrice's mind. In the end, the domineering aristocrat persuades Bess to serve as her post-op private nurse. Bess gets even more than she bargained for when her patient's godson, Gordon Neville, suffers an accident, and she's dispatched to help him. She finds Neville recovering from a fall off a cliff; Neville's friend Frederick Caldwell suffered fatal injuries while apparently attempting to save him. A wound on the back of Frederick's skull suggests a different story, and Bess's investigation uncovers a complex web of secrets and possible motives for murder. Todd has few peers at both keeping readers turning pages for the reveal and making every character on those pages feel real. Those seeking emotional depth in their mysteries will be richly rewarded. Agent: Lisa Gallagher, DeFiore & Co. (Feb.)

Not one but two unexpected journeys carry nursing Sister Bess Crawford far from whatever comfort zone she might imagine she still has. When her mother receives an entreaty from Bess' cousin Melinda to stop in at the home of Lady Beatrice Linton, the widowed employer of Melinda's friend Lillian Taylor, to stand in for the nurse Lady Beatrice refuses to engage after the pending removal of her gallbladder, she suggests to Bess that the two of them combine the trip with a visit to Florence Dunstan, Bess' friend in York. But Clarice Crawford has to drop out at the last minute, leaving Bess to travel alone to Yorkshire. First Lady Beatrice takes to her so strongly that she insists Bess stay on with her after her surgery; then Bess' plans are upended even more completely by a terse telegram to Lady Beatrice: "Gordon had accident. Come at once." Since the patient is still convalescing, Bess travels again, this time with Lillian, to Scarfdale, the home of Lady Beatrice's godson. Gordon Neville has indeed been gravely injured in a fall from an outcropping, but his brother Arthur's telegram has buried the lede: The same incident left the brothers' childhood friend Lt. Frederick Caldwell dead. Deeply saddened but no longer traumatized by violence since her service in the Great War, Bess examines Frederick's body and realizes that at least one of his wounds looks anything but accidental. It's not long before she also realizes that she's the only person who knows that Gordon's alibi for a murder that soon follows won't stand up. Fortunately, she brings both experience and expertise to the mystery, for murder is "rather like nursing in a way." As usual in this elegiac series, the heroine's detective work is less important than the sad secrets it discloses. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

In the thirteenth Bess Crawford mystery, the Great War has ended. Bess, who was a battlefield nurse (when she wasn't amateur sleuthing), is at loose ends, unsure of the direction her life will take. Then, after an act of kindness on Bess' part draws her into a feud between two families, she has no idea what sort of darkness and tragedy lie ahead. Fans of Todd's long-running Crawford series, or, indeed, the Inspector Ian Rutledge series (set during the same time period), will thoroughly enjoy this novel. It boasts Todd's typically fluid prose and a story that layers mystery upon mystery until it reaches a level of complexity that will keep readers glued to the page. The Crawford novels follow a fairly standard formula, but the authors, a mother-and-son writing team working under a pseudonym, always throw in a few satisfying variations on a theme. The result is that each novel in this long-running series feels fresh.