Whispers and lies

The Great War drags on in Charles Todd's 2015 novel A Pattern of Lies, and Bess Crawford continues to work long hours as a nurse near the front. She does get an occasional leave to return to England for a few days, however, and on one such leave she meets a former patient, Major Mark Ashton, and learns of the difficulties his family now faces.

Mark's father managed a gunpowder factory that had exploded, killing many local residents. (The novel was inspired by an actual wartime explosion in England.) The Army had found no evidence of sabotage, yet now the senior Ashton is the subject of a whispering campaign that holds him responsible for blowing up his own factory. He is arrested while Bess is staying at the Ashton home, and conviction for murder seems likely given the mood of the community.

Bess must return to France, even before she can visit her own family, yet even there she manages to investigate the pattern of lies besieging the Ashtons. When another nurse is nearly smothered to death while sleeping in Bess's cot, she knows she must be getting close to discovering what's really behind it all.

The action takes her back and forth across the Channel several times and eventually leads to a hair-raising chase and gunfight. The novel has more action than a typical Bess Crawford mystery, yet the plot becomes so convoluted that it becomes difficult to understand exactly what happens and why. Complicated mysteries are usually harder to believe than relatively simple ones, and that is the problem here.