AmySea

Rosalyn Landor's narration of An Impartial Witness was quite nice to listen to, and she is a talented narrator. Unfortunately, I didn't care for this Bess Crawford mystery as much as I did for A Duty to the Dead.

There were still a lot of side-effect-of-war issues discussed in this book, and I really like this series for the smart, thoughtful, and serious way in which those issues are integrated into the stories. In this mystery, though, I felt that the authors didn't do as neat of a job of making the situations in which Bess found herself very plausible. She made some very bitter enemies in this story, yet at every turn these people were always willing to speak with her and answer her very probing questions. No one slammed the door in her face, no one refused to meet with her, and no one told her to get lost.

I also didn't care as much for the characters in this story. Bess and her associates are fine, of course, but I didn't feel much sympathy for any of the many victims in this tale. I also didn't like the Deus ex machina ending, and I think the story would have held more weight and made a bigger statement if things had wound up differently.

The story was a decent distraction, but that's all it was for me. Still, I'll read A Bitter Truth, and hope for a better read out of that one.