A FATAL LIE, New Inspector Ian Rutledge Mystery from Charles Todd

 [Originally published at New York Journal of Books]

“Those who value similar portrayals of place as character—as in Louise Penny’s Three Pines, for instance—will treasure A Fatal Lie and its Welsh backdrop.”

Scotland Yard inspector Ian Rutledge can never be quite sure whether his own employment will endure through the investigation of his next case; Chief Superintendent Markham can’t stand him, and only Rutledge’s quick success on behalf of powerful political connections has ever been enough to guarantee his job from one day to the next.

In A Fatal Lie, Markham takes advantage of a help request from a northern Welsh county to send Rutledge out into a raw, bleak location—which, come to think of it, isn’t much worse than sitting in the office exposed to his superior’s malicious dislike of him. Moreover, Rutledge is by nature determined to find criminals and see justice done. In his private life, he is still struggling to make amends for events in his Great War service, which have resulted in his mind being haunted by the voice of Corporal Hamish MacLeod.

“Hamish was saying, ‘Ye ken, the Yard doubts ye. Else, they’d not send ye to Wales for a drowning.’

Rutledge didn’t answer.

‘Aye, ye can try to ignore the signs. But ye’ve seen them for yersel’.’

Hamish was trying to goad him into a quarrel, but it was only a reflection of his own troubled mind.

Setting his teeth, he concentrated on the road ahead.”

Though the drowned man has no easy identification, and the community around the drowning refuses to assist Rutledge’s investigation, he’s quick to realize that the body is that of a member of the Bantams, a wartime service unit of very short men, like the Welsh with their poverty. And it turns out easy enough to be sure the victim is Sam Milford.

But then it’s as if Rutledge has tumbled down a rabbit hole of people’s mixed motivations: a solicitor who deliberately steers him wrong, a new widow misleading him, dangerous individuals willing to extend their self-protection to threatening Rutledge himself.

The new widow, Mrs. Milford, may be the most difficult to understand.

“She closed her eyes. ‘I can’t go on,’ she said in a strained voice. ‘I can’t endure any more. … I’ve lost everything now,’ she said finally. ‘There’s nothing left, I can’t go on. It’s my fault. And I can’t bear it.’

He wondered if she’d even heard his questions.”

Some of the plot here turns on what different people mean by “lost,” as well as on what Rutledge can find, as he dodges the malice aimed toward him from London. Even more of it swirls through the disturbing waters of twisted love and dark motives that in some ways, Rutledge is too kind a person to grasp.

And when he does begin to understand the complicated motives in place, he’s already in danger himself – being hunted by the killer.

Ardent readers of this Charles Todd series (one of a pair by the mother-and-son author team) may regret that Hamish’s abrupt and caustic voice, so quick to warn Rutledge of danger, is not especially present in A Fatal Lie. Nor are the other aspects of this investigator’s own grief-stricken life: the betrayals in love, the desperate need for honest friendship, the sense of being forever lost in a peacetime that doesn’t grasp and won’t admit what he’s endured and how the war has broken him.

Yet for that very reason, A Fatal Lie provides an excellent book with which to walk into Rutledge’s pursuit of crime and determination to make things right. It also gives a haunting introduction to the perils and fierce protectiveness of Welsh culture, a setting in which long-term vindictiveness can flourish and persist, if Rutledge fails to grasp the forces in play and the motives that may stem as much from love as from malice.

Those who value similar portrayals of place as character—as in Louise Penny’s Three Pines, for instance—will treasure A Fatal Lie and its Welsh backdrop. As a police procedural, also, the book’s persistent untangling of motive, means, and opportunity provides an instant classic for this mystery genre, along with an intriguing exploration of the heart’s effects on the mind. 

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here. 

Charles Todd, THE BLACK ASCOT, British Post World War I, Richly Detailed and Memorable

[Originally published in the New York Journal of Books]

“It’s the taint of a shell-shock diagnosis, something considered so offensive and humiliating in postwar society that it can terminate Rutledge’s career almost as quickly as a bullet to the head.”

Charles Todd’s Inspector Ian Rutledge series opens its 21st title with a tip of the hat to a 1910 event well known in England, but perhaps not to American readers: the “Black Ascot,” when the traditional glittering social occasion of the royally established horse race faced a catastrophe of timing. King Edward VII died, and the royal house was in deep mourning, with the nation hardly less so. In a brilliant adaptation, the “glitterati” attended in mourning dress: clad entirely in black.

In a death related to the race are the seeds of the tragedy and linked crimes than Inspector Ian Rutledge finds himself investigating eleven years later, in his postwar resumed post with Scotland Yard. Not that the case is obvious to start with—in fact, Rutledge simply responds to a village crisis, an overwrought man on a church roof, holding a girl hostage with a shotgun.

Fans of the series will give a quiet “hoorah” for the immediate presence of Rutledge’s haunting inner voice, that of his wartime colleague Hamish, warning Ian of the perils in the rescue he attempts. There’s an unexpected gift to Rutledge when he resolves things: word of an observation of a “most wanted” murderer from that 1910 event, Alan Barrington.

The information offered at the start of The Black Ascot positions Rutledge on dubious ground (as usual) with his superior:

Rutledge made good time back to London. And for most of the drive, he mulled over Danny’s sighting of Alan Barrington, and whether or not to mention it to Chief Superintendent Jameson. … If the sighting proved true, and the Yard wasn’t informed then he would be derelict in his duty.

Hamish, stirring in the back of his mind, said, ‘He’ll be more fashed if you send him chasing after wild geese.’

Of course, since the Chief Superintendent heartily despises Rutledge, the hunt for a near-vanished deadly criminal is also a possible way to humiliate the inspector with that wild goose chase, and possibly even to fire him. So the hunt is on.

Charles Todd is a master plot tangler, and in the hands of this mother-son author team, Rutledge must comb apart society’s powerful connections, apparent love matches that turn abusive, and more. Because he’s hunting Alan Barrington, he’s pitting his wits and emotional understanding against some passionate defenders of the accused—people who will do almost anything to prevent Barrington’s capture and trial. He’ll also pry into a family’s desperate efforts to protect an outcast and a hidden set of long-ago crimes.

The enduring appeal of this series is its subtle and poignant probing of the damage done by the Great War: to Ian Rutledge, to England’s upper classes and villages alike, and to a nation’s concept of itself as gracious and lovely. At front and center this time is not the struggle between Ian and the part of himself that speaks with Hamish’s voice. Instead, it’s the taint of a shell-shock diagnosis, something considered so offensive and humiliating in postwar society that it can terminate Rutledge’s career almost as quickly as a bullet to the head.

So solving the Barrington case, and capturing the killer, becomes Rutledge’s only hope for his self-respect and his job. As the pages fly past, Charles Todd takes this investigator into tangled boundaries and razor-sharp fences. The best kind of suspense is generated: believing that somehow the inspector will come through, but not knowing, from one moment to the next, how on earth he and his fragile network of support will find a way out of the war-torn darkness.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

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Charles Todd's New Bess Crawford Mystery, A FORGOTTEN PLACE, Embraces Wales

[Originally published in the New York Journal of Books]

How marvelous to have Charles Todd set the tenth Bess Crawford mystery in Wales, the least written-about part of the British Isles. And the long, slow movement into the story in A Forgotten Place evokes how loveliness can exist next to, even woven into, a deep darkness.

The skills of wartime nursing serve well for Bess Crawford, a “Sister” returning home from battlefield hospitals, in coping with the despair of British amputees at the end of the Great War, in 1914. (Remember that unlike the American term where "sister" would have implied being a nun, the British term "nursing sister" meant a graduate nurse). With a mix of gentle bullying learned from experience and from the Matrons who’ve led the nurses, Crawford nudges a Welsh office, Captain Williams, to resume leadership of his wounded men—even with his own condition of a missing leg and uncertain fitness for postwar work.

Yet despite Bess Crawford’s best efforts, one of the men is dead of suicide before leaving her care, and others appear ready to do the same. After all, what use is an armless or legless man in a coal mine? For in Wales at the time, that was almost the only way to make a living, dirty and dangerous as it was. 

Bess works at letting go of a persistent sense of responsibility for the Welsh men. But when a note from Captain Williams informs her that another suicide’s taken place, with more sure to follow, Bess takes the man’s plea seriously: “I’m at my wits’ end, and I am writing to ask your help in bringing them to their senses. I have no right to ask this of you, but if someone doesn’t do something, we’ll all be gone by the spring.”

Todd is completely convincing in portraying Bess Crawford’s overwhelming sense that she must “fix” this, and at the same time showing the tenderness and loyalty that she gives so readily to people she cares about, even though they live far away and in circumstances she can’t fathom. And it’s perfectly logical then for Bess to take her own leave and quietly board a train for that desolate, forgotten place and the wounded warriors barely clinging to existence.

When Bess finally catches up with the captain, who has already moved away from the suicides that surrounded him, he’s in an isolated hamlet on the storm-swept coast, even bleaker than the usual Welsh settlement of the time. His first whisper to her is ominous: “You mustn’t stay here,” he said softly. “It isn’t safe.”

That turns out to be an understatement, as Bess finds herself trapped in the hamlet and cut off from all her support, with her family and Matron not knowing she’s in this place, and the threat of death aimed even at her, if she tries to escape. Why? Well, the hamlet has a secret—and because Bess is such a good investigator, she soon knows that secret. Nobody can afford to allow her to tell it.

Readers of this series will appreciate how Charles Todd (a mother-and-son writing team) draws out the impact of the Great War in this grim time that could have been a celebration of peace, but instead reveals the deep wounds of the survivors. But there’s no need to have read the series before plunging into A Forgotten Place: Todd positions Bess Crawford’s persistence and daring adeptly, and no plot elements depend on the earlier books. There are a few unfortunate name errors in the text, but it’s easy to overlook them, in the double tide of the soldiers’ despair and Bess’s fierce commitment to bringing about as much healing and justice as is possible. 

Deft plot twists and an atmospheric setting make this a must-read for anyone savoring the abundance of World War I and II crime novels being published. In addition, the Bess Crawford series is the perfect “other gender” balance to both Todd’s original Inspector Rutledge series and James R. Benn’s Billy Boyle investigations, and A Forgotten Place forms an intriguing parallel to the Shetland mysteries by Ann Cleeves. Well worth adding to the “to be read” stack.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

New from Randall Silvis, WALKING THE BONES, Murder and Love

Last year's mystery from Randall Silvis was Two Days Gone, a superb work of compelling suspense that tested the impact of once-in-a-lifetime friendships, while also inquiring into how writers do that mysterious "slice open a vein" action and live to tell about it ... or not. Police Sergeant Ryan DeMarco's investigation led him into immense pain over the loss of his writer friend, and also across the line into killing a killer.

In this year's new Silvis offering, WALKING THE BONES, DeMarco is determined to recover from his losses -- and to get around to the foundational work that his romantic relationship with a fellow officer, Trooper Jayme Matson. It's already a fraught affair, taking place around his obvious case of depression and PTSD and haunted by his child's death and the way his wife has abandoned him (but not yet divorced him). Is there any chance he can regain enough health of heart -- emotional and physical -- to meet Jayme's expectations?

Things look rough -- but when a cabal of quirky justice seekers in Jayme's hometown of Aberdeen, Kentucky, enlist DeMarco to investigate the deaths of seven young women (only their bones remain), his sense of purpose moved back into position (and Jayme's egging it on).

The crimesolving here is well plotted and first rate. But the best strength of any Randall Silvis book is the growth of character, often through pain, and with much awareness of how fragile life can be. Here's a taste of WALKING THE BONES:

At sixteen [DeMarco] was still fleet of foot, and by then had gotten a name for himself as a street fighter thanks to his quick hands and footwork. His knuckles were still scarred fro some of those fights.

In the army he could do five miles with a full pack and still be the first man to the showers. But he had been forty pounds lighter then. And unburdened by the elephantine weight of a conscience that rendered all unnecessary movement futile.

These days all the important movement took place in his head. And to keep that movement fro devolving now into a dark downward spiral, he thought about the girls. Seven unfortunate girls of color, all from miles and hours away. all ending up here in quiet little Aberdeen with the butterflies and hummingbirds,

He wondered if Hoyle had been aware of the metaphor he had created by describing the girls as cocooned in plastic sheeting. Hoyle, as strange as he was. did not strike DeMarco as  man who chose his words lightly.

And it made DeMarco sad to think of those girls as unformed butterflies. They had never been given their wings, had never tested the sky. And now every time DeMarco saw a butterfly, he would think of those girls.

For DeMarco to solve the case, he'll have to push well beyond his current physical limits, and risk both his life and his heart, under grim conditions that reminded me at times of a Stephen King horror plot. But don't underestimate him -- or Jayme, who's determined to somehow pull him back to life.

A fine read; I only wish DeMarco's series came to publication more often than once a year. This one, like its predecessor, comes from Sourcebooks. Readers of Julia Keller's West Virginia mysteries will feel at home in this Silvis series; those to value the mysteries of Charles Todd and Louise Penny will also recognize the soul battle underway.

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Quick Mention, Charles Todd, NO SHRED OF EVIDENCE

This morning's New York Times Book Review section includes mention by Marilyn Stasio of the newest Bess Crawford mystery by mother-and-son writing team Charles Todd, In the Shattered Tree (click here for Stasio review). I think I'm going to have to read it soon -- I'm usually pretty casual about getting to the Charles Todd books because they are so well publicized that the Kingdom Books review is just a bit of kindling in the usual warm blaze of appreciation.

And that reminded me that I hadn't yet mentioned this year's Charles Todd book in the other series, the one built around British World War I survivor Inspector Ian Rutledge. I caught up with NO SHRED OF EVIDENCE recently and enjoyed the read very much. Taking a somewhat different tack from others in this series, Inspector Rutledge knows from the start that murder has been committed and that a murderer is on the loose in the hauntingly lovely terrain of the north coast of Cornwall (far from the usual Scotland Yard support services, and creating a crisis of conflict among police forces). Rutledge's task is to force the double community -- the local folks and the wealthy residents who form their own closed network within this -- to open up enough for him to find actual evidence. ("Was she strong enough emotionally to lie for the others, if they had decided to drown Saunders? To keep their secret even in the face of trial and conviction? He couldn't be sure. Sometimes fragile people were made of steel, where their own interests were concerned.")

I liked very much the steady progress of police procedure, personal commitment, and dogged pursuit of "means, motive, opportunity" in this book, and the integrity that Rutledge continues to display. As an ardent fan of the situation Todd has created, where Rutledge's war-induced "shell shock" has created the voice of his deceased friend Hamish in his mind, I would have liked a bit more of Hamish's presence and voice here. Such hunger may yet drive me back to re-read the entire series in sequence. What a satisfying thought for facing the colder seasons ahead!

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here. 

Brief Mention, Charles Todd, A FINE SUMMER'S DAY

The title may be a bit out of season, but this 2015 title from Charles Todd is ideal for relaxing winter reading! A FINE SUMMER'S DAY is actually the prequel to the 16 other Inspector Ian Rutledge books. Instead of being set after World War I, it tackles the run-up to the war, including Rutledge's engagement to marry Jean Gordon. At the same time, it unfurls a mystery and a series of killings that reshape Rutledge's life, as well as testing his commitment to a police career. And it's available in paperback, to tote with you during holiday tasks and travels.

If you're a fan of this fiercely haunted mystery series, with its powerful insights into British life and class structure, this book is a must. I enjoyed all of it. On the other hand, if you're not yet a Charles Todd reader, I recommend that you wait on this one until you've read a few others -- here's the list in order, on the author's website: http://www.charlestodd.com/the-history-of-inspector-ian-rutledge. A FINE SUMMER'S DAY is all the better for having bonded first with Rutledge through his work, as the authors themselves did -- and the suspense will do you good.

Charles Todd, HUNTING SHADOWS: Newest Insp. Ian Rutledge Mystery

This week's news from England included lowland flooding that's wiping out a small town -- with the promise of more of the same, thanks to global climate change. It's a sobering prediction. And it takes me back into HUNTING SHADOWS, which I read with pleasure a couple of weeks ago. This time the Todds -- son and mother writing team, under a single nom de plume -- take Inspector Ian Rutledge to England's Fen country, a lowland that's similar in some ways to Holland, and to the New Jersey Meadows: Human-made channels crisscross the landscape to drain the land and make it crop-worthy. Adding another "Dutch" touch is the presence of windmills, though they may no longer be needed or functioning; they pumped water, it seems. And they are the speechless giants of the terrain, the remnants of another time that pull Rutledge into the uneasy time warp of World War I that continues to affect his thinking and his everyday functioning.

For Rutledge is a "shell-shocked" survivor of the Battle of the Somme in World War I, and as series fans know, his particular mental disorder takes the form of an active and often cruel voice in the back of his mind, that of his close friend Hamish, whom Rutledge had ordered shot during the critical moment before the bombs fell. Hamish is protective of Rutledge -- he's likely to snap "Ware!" (Beware!) at him when danger approaches. In the Fen country, Hamish seems as overwhelmed at Rutledge himself by the fraught silences of the landscape and its people.

Rutledge is here because two murders have taken place, clearly by the same assassin, perhaps a sharpshooter torn loose of inner moorings by the war and its aftermath. And the victims are part of the upper middle class, even the upper class, so the pressure on Rutledge's Acting Chief Superintendent at Scotland Yard goes directly onto the inspector: Solve the crimes, and for heaven's sake, find the shooter before another killing takes place.

Yet in a rural community where nobody seems quite willing to tell him all he needs to know, Rutledge is doubly handicapped. Moreover, what a witness seems to have seen -- a monstrous face just before the rifle fired -- ties into whispers of a legendary assassin that the inspector recalls from his own wartime service. And the fear and anxiety linked with that tie are enough to rouse his inner guardian, Hamish, to an edgy anger that punishes Rutledge once again, even as he struggles to solve the crimes, mostly solo.

Although this mystery has less tangles with that angry Scottish voice in Rutledge's mind, and less to do with the expiation that it demands of him, HUNTING SHADOWS takes Rutledge to the edge of new possibilities in his life: Could it be that his own losses and mourning have lost their sharp edge, so that he can perhaps admit some affection for others in his life? Series readers will enjoy the slow metamorphosis of this compelling figure of Scotland Yard detection; those new to the Todd series will find enough guideposts to make the book read well, but are also likely to come away from this title with a determination to read all of the series from the beginning, in A Test of Wills. It's a great fit with the Jacqueline Winspear books, or with Pat Barker's Regeneration series, as well as an intriguing way to dig into World War I history and the English aftermath -- especially appropriate in 2014, as we mark 100 years since the start of the "War to End All Wars."

The Charles Todd books alternate between Rutledge and another series, the Bess Crawford mysteries. I like both -- but it's the Rutledge ones that take root in my mind, much as Hamish continues to accompany this Scotland Yard inspector. For more of our Charles Todd reviews, click here; and to search our holdings, click here instead.

Good Mysteries for Keeping or Giving: 2 -- Sara J. Henry, Charles Todd

This weekend the snow is vanishing rapidly, quite a feat considering how long it's been in place on this northern ridge. Where the sunshine heats the ground, mud lingers -- because under it is a still-frozen boundary. But this too shall pass; no regrets about seeing the end of winter.

Still, I was glad it was snowing while I read Sara J. Henry's 2013 mystery, A COLD AND LONELY PLACE. Set in the Adirondacks in midwinter -- at the time of the Winter Carnival, when an ice palace is erected and athletic competions and merry parties enliven the area around Saranac Lake.

Here, freelance writer Troy Chance, reporting for the local paper, is on the scene when a body is found in the ice of the lake. It's a man she knows, and the quick conclusion is that he must have fallen through the ice when it was still fragile, and drowned in the muscle-numbing water just under the surface. That's a grim and gruesome way to die, and of course, it could have been an accident, perhaps with some malice setting it into motion.

Yet Troy keeps discovering puzzles about prep-school grad Troy Winslow, and his death becomes an increasing obsession for her. Fortunately, her editor at the paper gives her leeway to dig into the life story of this elegant young man. Not so good, though, is the tangle of relationships and attitudes that first drags one of her housemates into police attention, then opens up the social fractures in the town, and finally takes Troy herself into danger.

This is Henry's second mystery, a sequel to Learning to Swim. Although the emotions that enmesh Troy are less compelling than in the first book, they come across as realistic and deeply felt -- and position this unwilling but skillful sleuth for further adventures. I'll be reading more.

Another winter treat I gave to myself was the time to snuggle up around hot tea and buttered biscuits with the 2011 offering from "Charles Todd," A BITTER TRUTH. Todd, which is the pen name of a son-and-mother writing team, provides two engrossing series -- one set after World War I yet rooted in its disasters and pain, and the other, this series, set during the war and featuring battlefield nurse  Bess Crawford. A BITTER TRUTH is, I think, the best yet in this series (it's the third): The authors have escaped from the sometimes stilted feminine voice they started with, and Bess's reactions now are savvy, shrewd, and courageous. Yes, her life is shaped by being a woman at a time when even nursing could be seen as a betrayal of the role of the upper-class young woman. But her reactions to discovering a stranded and perhaps abused young woman huddled on the London doorstep of the house where Bess rents a room, and her determination in straightening out the woman's convoluted family drama tinged with wartime paranoia, are crisply courageous. Bess doesn't fumble or flinch; she probes, prods, and processes the information and actions around her. A top-notch sleuth, she is compelled to investigate by the same urge that takes her back to the battlefield: People need her insight, her skills, and her decisiveness.

The Todds endow the book with solid research and a multilayered, rich view of both the English social structure and the forces at play in the Great War. A great read, and worth keeping on the shelf for next winter as well.