But anyone who cares to loll in early-20th century English villages and mores and follow a plucky heroine as she confronts the stupidity of war will find solace in this old-fashioned mystery.Īnother sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.Ī week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Will readers miss Inspector Rutledge? You bet. A gruesome denouement lays bare all the family secrets and misalliances and releases Bess from her deathbed vow to Arthur. Graham and, to Bess’s dismay, the late Arthur himself. A visit to the village rector reveals several other fatal calamities over the years that cast suspicion on other Graham family members: clubfooted Timothy, Mrs. Meanwhile, another village patient, a traumatized war victim who has fallen under her care, commits suicide-or does he? When Peregrine regains his strength, he takes Bess on the run to help him recover his memory of Lily’s death.

Providing it, Bess is struck by how rational Peregrine seems. Another matter, however, takes precedence for the Graham family: Peregrine, the Graham brother confined in an asylum since he was barely a teenager for murdering Lily the housemaid, is near death from pneumonia and needs nursing care. She’s bent on relaying a dying message-matters must be set right-from favored patient Arthur Graham to his brother Jonathan. Relinquishing for the moment Inspector Ian Rutledge ( A Matter of Justice, 2008, etc.), the Todd writing partnership presents Bess Crawford, invalided home when the hospital ship she nursed on is shot out from under her. World War I nurse keeps a burdensome promise.

A Duty to the Dead by Charles Todd