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Spring never seems the appropriate time for death, particularly widespread death. In 1918, the Spanish flu epidemic is killing millions of people in the middle of a war that is doing the same thing. Bess Crawford is near the French front, treating the wounded and the sick. It is overwhelming on many levels. One night Bess calls an orderly to come carry a dead soldier to the shed where the corpses are stored until burial can take place. He insists that she come along. Reluctantly she does. There is a dead man in there, amongst all the ordinary dead. He is not ordinary in that he was murdered, and Bess knows him. He is Vincent Carson. His death is deemed a suicide, which is devastating to the family, both emotionally and financially. Bess gets called away, and in the course of the night, falls ill with the flu. She survives and is eventually sent back to England to recuperate. She inquires about Vincent Carson and learns that his death was reported as a suicide, which is devastating to the family, both emotionally and financially. Bess knows that Carson did not kill himself.. She determines to prove that he was murdered. This determination is fueled by the knowledge that the orderly who took her to the shed is dead. As Bess continues to probe, both in England and in France, she finds out that anyone connected to the death of Carson winds up dead. AN UNQUIET GRAVE is noteworthy in that Todd uses the backdrop of horrific and redundant death to tell a story that, in its foundation, is based on something not really unusual, then or now. The characters living in this environment are believable and all too human. One wonders how anyone, even someone as unflappable as Bess is, can think coherently in those front-line hospitals or while recuperating from a frequently deadly disease. The reality conveyed by Todd when writing about places is so convincing that one hardly notices; it's just the way it is. The denouement seemed, at first glance, to be a bit contrived. Perhaps it is. Still, in the confusion and chaos that is war, this resolution is certainly not impossible or even improbable. Decide for yourself. § P.J. Coldren lives in northern lower Michigan where she reads and reviews widely across the mystery genre when she isn't working in her local hospital pharmacy.
Reviewed by P.J. Coldren, June 2012
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