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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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.