A Pattern of Lies by Charles Todd

 (Bess Crawford #7)

326 pages / 11 hrs, 3 mins

"An explosion and fire at the Ashton Gunpowder Mill in Kent has killed over a hundred men. It’s called an appalling tragedy—until suspicion and rumor raise the specter of murder. While visiting the Ashton family, Bess Crawford finds herself caught up in a venomous show of hostility that doesn’t stop with Philip Ashton’s arrest. Indeed, someone is out for blood, and the household is all but under siege.

"The only known witness to the tragedy is now at the Front in France. Bess is asked to find him. When she does, he refuses to tell her anything that will help the Ashtons. Realizing that he believes the tissue of lies that has nearly destroyed a family, Bess must convince him to tell her what really happened that terrible Sunday morning. But now someone else is also searching for this man.

"To end the vicious persecution of the Ashtons, Bess must risk her own life to protect her reluctant witness from a clever killer intent on preventing either of them from ever reaching England." --from the publisher

The series continues to be interesting and I'm learning much about the United Kingdom and World War I. The plot dragged for me in places, and I thought the killer's motive was pretty weak. I give it three out of five stars.

An Unwilling Accomplice by Charles Todd

(Bess Crawford #6)

368 pages / 11 hrs, 1 min

"Home on leave, Bess Crawford is asked to accompany a wounded soldier confined to a wheelchair to Buckingham Palace, where he’s to be decorated by the King. The next morning when Bess goes to collect Wilkins, he has vanished. Both the Army and the nursing service hold Bess negligent for losing the war hero, and there will be an inquiry.

"Then comes disturbing word from the Shropshire police, complicating the already difficult situation: Wilkins has been spotted, and he’s killed a man. If Bess is to save her own reputation, she must find Wilkins and uncover the truth. But the elusive soldier has disappeared again and even the Shropshire police have lost him. Suddenly, the moral implications of what has happened—that a patient in her charge has committed murder—become more important to Bess than her own future. She’s going to solve this mysterious puzzle, but righting an injustice and saving her honor may just cost Bess her life."  --from the publisher

Just an "okay" addition to this series. The story didn't flow well, and many of the characters' actions were out of character. I hope this is a one-off, and the books get back to their usual quality. I give it three out of five stars, but that may be a bit generous.

A Question of Honor by Charles Todd

A Question of Honor by Charles Todd
(Bess Crawford #5)
320 pages / 10 hrs, 5 mins

"In 1908, when a young Bess Crawford lived in India, an unforgettable incident darkened the otherwise happy time. Her father's regiment discovered it had a murderer in its ranks, an officer who killed five people yet was never brought to trial.

"A decade later, tending to the wounded on the battlefields of France during World War I, Bess learns from a dying man that the alleged murderer, Lieutenant Wade, is alive and serving at the Front. According to reliable reports, he'd died years before, so how did Wade escape India? What drove a good man to murder in cold blood? Bess uses her leave to investigate. But when she stumbles on the horrific truth, she is shaken to her very core. The facts reveal a reality that could have been her own fate."  --from the publisher

This is one of my favorites in the series so far. The story and characters are engaging, and the mystery is believable. I give it four out of five stars.

An Unmarked Grave by Charles Todd

An Unmarked Grave by Charles Todd
(Bess Crawford #4)
262 pages / 8 hrs, 31 mins

"In the spring of 1918, the Spanish flu epidemic spreads, killing millions of soldiers and civilians across the globe. Overwhelmed by the constant flow of wounded soldiers coming from the French front, battlefield nurse Bess Crawford must now contend with hundreds of influenza patients as well.

"However, war and disease are not the only killers to strike. Bess discovers, concealed among the dead waiting for burial, the body of an officer who has been murdered. Though she is devoted to all her patients, this soldier's death touches her deeply. Not only did the man serve in her father's former regiment, he was also a family friend.

"Before she can report the terrible news, Bess falls ill, the latest victim of the flu. By the time she recovers, the murdered officer has been buried, and the only other person who saw the body has hanged himself. Or did he?

"Working her father's connections in the military, Bess begins to piece together what little evidence she can find to unmask the elusive killer and see justice served. But she must be as vigilant as she is tenacious. With a determined killer on her heels, each move Bess makes could be her last."  --from the publisher

I didn't like this one as well as the others in the series. Bess's life of privilege during such a horrific, widespread period of suffering rubbed me the wrong way.  The class system in England is sometimes difficult for me to understand.  Still, it was a good story although the ending was a bit weak, imho.  I give it three out of five stars.

A Bitter Truth by Charles Todd

A Bitter Truth by Charles Todd
(Bess Crawford #3)
352 pages / 11 hrs, 1 min

"World War One battlefield nurse Bess Crawford is featured for a third time in A Bitter Truth. Bess reaches out to help an abused and frightened young woman, only to discover that no good deed ever goes unpunished when the good Samaritan nurse finds herself falsely accused of murder."  --from the publisher.

Good story, but I didn't care for the family Bess was trying to help.  They weren't very likable, in my opinion, so the story dragged for me in parts.

A Duty to the Dead by Charles Todd

A Duty to the Dead by Charles Todd
(Bess Crawford #1)
336 pages / 9 hrs, 49 mins

"A Duty to the Dead introduces readers to an unforgettable new protagonist...Bess Crawford, a courageous World War I nurse and determined investigator. Once again the New York Times bestselling author brilliantly evokes post-Great War Europe, casting an indomitable heroine into a simmering cauldron of village secrets, family intrigues, and murder."  --from the publisher

I thoroughly enjoyed this tale.  It is well written with unique characters so that I had no trouble keeping the large cast straight as I read.  And Bess Crawford is such an everyday protagonist that it was easy to relate to her.  I gave it 4.5 stars out of 5.

The Black Ascot by Charles Todd

The Black Ascot: An Ian Rutledge Mystery by Charles Todd --- 343 pages including Acknowledgements.

Note: the title of the 21st book in Charles Todd's Ian Rutledge Series, The Black Ascot, is a reference to the 1910 Royal Ascot Race Meeting. The Royal Ascot Racing Grounds were founded in 1711 by Queen Anne, and the annual meet is patronized by British royalty and aristocracy as one of the premiere social and fashion events of the year. But the 1910 race meeting, following just after the death of King Edward VII, when the nation was still in official mourning, became known as the "Black Ascot" because all of the attendees showed up dressed in black.

A grateful ex-convict provides Detective Inspector Ian Rutledge with information about a recent sighting of Alan Barrington, a murder suspect who has eluded Scotland Yard for eleven years. Rutledge is skeptical but eventually decides to pass on this tip to his superior, Chief Superintendent Jameson. Jameson is an old fashioned copper and neither likes nor trusts Rutledge, who is upper class and has education and social connections --- and who still suffers from the traumatic after affects of his experiences in the Great War.

Jameson assigns Rutledge the task of reviewing the Barrington case files one more time. Alan Barrington was one of a group of Oxford students who courted Blanche Richmond. Blanche married Barrington's close friend, Mark Thorne, who made a career in banking. But Thorne lost all his money, and his clients' money, in a series of bad investments, and killed himself. Alan Barrington became obssessed with the idea that Mark had been set up with bad advice, and deliberately ruined by a man who coveted his wife, Blanche. When Blanche subsequently married Harold Fletcher-Monro, Barrington was suspected of tampering with Fletcher-Munro's automobile, on the day of the Black Ascot. Driving home after the race, Fletcher-Munro lost control of the car on a clear, straight stretch of country road, veered into a copse of trees, and crashed. 

 Although Fletcher-Munro suffered crippling injuries, it was Blanche who died. The police concluded Barrington tampered with the car with the intention of causing the accident, but he fled the country before he could be arrested, and despite all their efforts, the police were never able to trace him.

Rutledge decides he needs to find out more about Barrington. He's convinced the man could not have disappeared so thoroughly and for so long without assistance. So he begins to interview Barrington's friends and associates.

When he returns to London, Rutledge answers a knock on the door of his flat and a gun explodes in his face. He is rushed to the hospital, but when he regains consciousness he can't remember anything  of the incident. But a service revolver is found on the doorstep. Coupled with his suspicions that Rutledge has been covering up recurring episodes of shell shock from the war, Jameson assumes Rutledge failed at an attempt at suicide. At that time, shell shock was seen as a sign of cowardice, and suicide as a disgrace. Jameson suspends Rutledge from duty, officially to allow him time to recuperate, but really as a prelude to a forced resignation one the furor had died down.

The Yard doesn't know everything about Rutledge's shell shock however; they don't know about the voice of the dead soldier that he hears in his head. But the ghost of Hamish accompanies Rutledge everywhere, sometimes friend, sometimes enemy, but always present and commenting on Rutledge's investigations.

Rutledge knows the only possible way to save his job is to find Barrington. But now on medial leave, he must work alone and with time running out, to find answers.

Fans of Ian Rutledge know that Charles Todd is a pen name for an American mother and son writing team. The Todds' breadth of knowledge about World War I and its aftermath for Britain is extraordinary, particularly the war's insidious effects on the soldiers who fought it and the country they returned to.  Another author with similar insight into the experience of the Great War is Jacqueline Winspear, author of the Maisie Dobbs Series.

Click HERE to read the review from Kirkus Reviews.

Click HERE to read the review from Criminal Element.com.

Cliick HERE to read the review from Publishers Weekly.

Click HERE to read the review from the New York Journal of Books.

The Gate Keeper by Charles Todd

The Gate Keeper: An Inspector Ian Rutledge Mystery by Charles Todd --- 306 pages

Number 20 in the long-running historical mystery series by the mother-and-son writing team of Caroline and Charles Todd, two of a very few American writers who can credibly produce a classic British crime novel.

It's December 1920, and after a long day celebrating his sister Frances’ wedding, Inspector Ian Rutledge drives into the night in a forlorn attempt to stave off nightmarish flashbacks of his "bad war" experiences in World War I. Even though the trenches are four years behind him, Rutledge still suffers the effects of trauma. What we know today as PTSD was then called "shell shock," and seen as a stigma and a sign of cowardice to be concealed at all costs.

Then Rutledge runs out of his nightmare and into another in the middle of a quiet country lane where he finds a stopped car, a body, and a young woman whose hands are covered in blood. The victim, Stephen Wentworth, was a quiet but well-respected Navy veteran who came home to run a bookshop he had purchased previously in the ancient Suffolk village of Wolfpit.  A gentleman with private means whose family had lived in the area, he had no enemies but no close friends either. The young woman, Elizabeth MacRae, was an acquaintance who sometimes visited her aunt in Wolfpit. Wentworth had escorted her to a dinner party with mutual friends a few miles distant. On their way back to Wolfpit, Miss MacRae claims, a man had stepped in front of the car on a lonely stretch of road, forcing them to stop. When Wentworth got out of the car to ask if the man needed help, the unknown man had shot him point-blank, then turned away and vanished into the darkness, leaving no trace.

Intrigued, Rutledge pulls rank to handle the case himself, cutting out the local man, Inspector Reed, who --- along with the dead man's own parents --- seems to harbor some animus against Wentworth. But he finds few leads in the village, while Inspector Reed and Wentworth's parents do their utmost to impede and hinder his investigation. Then a second local man is murdered in the same manner; again a well-respected gentleman farmer and war veteran. Rutledge is convinced these are not random killings; the murderer is targeting these men for a reason, however obscure.

Rutledge’s investigations take him up one dead end after another, as he methodically sorts through the accumulating evidence. The pieces slowly come together in an unexpected and satisfying solution. The victim, his family, and the supporting cast of characters are as carefully drawn as Rutledge himself, the plot is convoluted yet believable, the setting atmospheric. Another outstanding mystery from Charles Todd.

Click HERE to listen to an interview with Caroline and Charles Todd, authors of The Gate Keeper.

Click HERE to read the review from Publishers Weekly.

Click HERE to read the review from Kirkus Reviews.

Click HERE to read the review from the Criminal Element blog.

Racing the Devil by Charles Todd

Racing the Devil: An Inspector Ian Rutledge Mystery by Charles Todd --- 341 pages

This is the nineteenth book in Todd's historical mystery series set in the aftermath of World War I, as the survivors of the trenches and the families of the dead struggle to deal with their lingering guilt, horror and loss.

Ian Rutledge's promising career with Scotland Yard was interrupted when he volunteered for military service in France; but no one, himself included, was prepared for the brutality of the first modern, mechanized war. Rutledge barely survived, and suffers from what was then called shell shock but we now know as post traumatic stress. He returns to Scotland Yard, but finds investigating crimes intensifies the struggle to conceal his mental vulnerabilities. 

In this novel, Rutledge is called in to investigate a motor car accident that killed the rector of St. Simon's in East Dedham, Sussex. The accident occurred on a dangerous rural road during a lashing rain storm. The driver lost control, the car rolled, and the driver was ejected. But there are some odd circumstances. The rector's housekeeper says he left the rectory that afternoon on his bicycle to visit a dying parishioner.  That house was in quite the opposite direction to the road where his body was found. The parents of the dying man report that the rector never arrived there. The car that the rector was driving belonged to Captain Standish, and was taken without permission; neither then Captain or his servants were aware the car was missing until the police informed them. And the local bobby who was first on the scene found evidence that another car was involved in the wreck. 

Rutledge discovers that Captain Standish also had a hard war and returned home changed by his ordeal.  Just before the Somme offensive, Standish and six other young officers had made a pact: if any of them survived (which was doubtful) they would meet one year after the end of the war, to race their motorcars from Paris to Nice.  

Five had beaten the odds and survived the war; they met a year later in Paris and set out for Nice. But on the dangerous mountain road descending toward Nice, Standish had been stalked and run off a cliff by another car. He had barely survived, and had become a virtual recluse as a result. 

Rutledge suspects that Standish, not the rector, was the target of this attack. But why would anyone want Standish dead? The answer lies in the past, and begins with that chance meeting of seven young officers in June 1916. 

Click HERE to read the review from Publishers Weekly.

Click HERE to read the review from Kirkus.

Click HERE to read a review from the New York Times.

No Shred of Evidence by Charles Todd

Mother and son writing team
Caroline and Charles Todd

No Shred of Evidence: An Inspector Ian Rutledge Mystery by Charles Todd --- 341 pages

The eighteenth book in the best-selling series by the mother and son writing team of Caroline and Charles Todd.  Although the authors are American, they write two different mystery series, one featuring Ian Rutledge and the other Bess Crawford, both dealing with World War I and its aftermath, and both featuring British characters and settings. And unlike many American authors, they get the Brits and the pre-forensics detecting right.

No Shred of Evidence takes a reluctant Ian Rutledge back to the coast of Cornwall. This time he's been handed the case of four privileged young women accused of murdering a banker's son during a boating trip. The women say they were trying to rescue the young man --- no more than an acquaintance (ie. not their equal in the complicated British class system) --- from his sinking dinghy. Somehow in the mad scramble of trying to heave him into their boat without capsizing it, he was struck on the head by an oar. An unfortunate accident, no more. However an eyewitness, a local farmer (even further down the social ladder), accuses the women of attempted murder. Since the victim never regains consciousness, there's no one to refute the farmer's accusation. Then other violent attacks occur, complicating Rutledge's investigation. Slowly he assembles the jigsaw puzzle of old grudges and uncontrolled fury that is behind the attacks. But can he find the proof in time to save four women from hanging for murder?

Click HERE to read an interview with Caroline and Charles Todd from the Fort Worth TX Star-Telegram.

Click HERE to read a review from Military Press.

Click HERE to read a review from Publishers Weekly.

Click HERE to read a review from the Historical Novel Society.

Wings of Fire by Charles Todd

Wings of Fire: A Novel by Charles Todd (Inspector Rutledge Mysteries, Book 2) --- 306 pages

Scotland Yard Inspector Ian Rutledge returns in this second period piece featuring the desolate, shell-shocked survivor of the Great War (World War I). Superintendent Bowles, Rutledge's superior, jealous of his background and abilities, is trying to torpedo his career with the Yard. So while a Ripper-like killer is terrorizing postwar London, Bowles looks for a way to banish Rutledge from the city while Bowles solves the crime and gets the glory. He finds what seems like a heavensent opportunity to send Rutledge on a fool's errand. Lady Rachel Ashford is insisting that Scotland Yard send a man to investigate the proven double suicide of her cousins, Olivia Marlowe and Nicholas Cheney, and the accidental death shortly after of another half-brother, Stephen Fitzhugh, in the seaside village of Borcombe in distant Cornwall.

But what looks straightforward to start begins to unravel as Inspector Rutledge asks his penetrating questions. Soon Rutledge uncovers the sad story of Rosamund Trevelyan, unlucky in love, with her three dead husbands and two dead childen, followed by her own "accidental" demise. And now three more of her grown children have died. Because these deaths happened over many years, the local people never questioned --- but Retledge is questioning now.

Justice demands the truth be found. But what if the truth he finds is even more unbearable than the hell of not knowing?  Will the truth bring back the dead, or ease the grief of the survivors? Yet once Rutledge picks up the scent of murder, he is compelled to follow it to the end, driven not just by duty but by a relentless ghost from the past.  Daphne DuMaurier eat your heart out!

Click HERE to read the review from Publisher's Weekly.

Click HERE to read the review from Kirkus.

Click HERE to read a review and an interview with the author from Crimepays.com.

A Test of Wills: A Mystery by Charles Todd

A Test of Wills: A Mystery by Charles Todd --- 282 pages

This is the first book in the critically acclaimed Inspector Ian Rutledge mystery series set in post World War I Britain, written by the American mother-and-son team of Caroline and Charles Todd, who publish under the pseudonym Charles Todd.

In many ways it's an old-fashioned mystery story eschewing explicit violence, sex and language.  In other ways it's a subtle psychological portrait --- not of the murderer as one might expect --- but of the Inspector, a survivor of four years in the trenches, suffering from what was then called "shell shock" (we know it today as post-traumatic stress disorder).

It s 1919, and the war has been won. Or at least people tell themselves that it's been won. But there is no happy homecoming for Inspector Ian Rutledge, who has spent months in hospital, shell-shocked and locked in a mortal embrace with the pitiless voice of Corporal Hamish McLeod, one of his men whom he had to execute for refusing an order during battle, under the pitiless military code of the time.

When his fiancee deserts him, Rutledge decides that the only way to save his sanity is to escape into his work. He conceals his fragile mental condition, and manages to get his old job and rank back at Scotland Yard. But Superintendent Bowles, his previous superior, is still jealous of Rutledge's brilliant pre-war reputation, still determined to destroy his career.  

Bowles sends Rutledge to investigates the murder of a popular colonel in Warwickshire but neglects to mention that the chief suspect in the case is a decorated war hero who has been received at Court and lauded by the Royal family.

The case is a political minefield. Charging a popular war hero with murder will create a storm of notoriety around the Inspector. Regardless of whether the trial results in a judgment of guilt or innocence, the political consequences will demand a scapegoat --- and who better than a war-damaged investigator who has lost his nerve?

Even worse, the crucial witness who can make or break his case is a another veteran suffering from severe shell shock that has never been recognized or treated. And as Hamish's voice eagerly points out, that grim fate could easily become Rutledge's own.

Click HERE for a review from Kirkus.

Click HERE for a review from the Paradise Mysteries blog.

Click HERE for a review from Bookotron.com.

Search The Dark by Charles Todd

Search The Dark: An Inspector Ian Rutledge Mystery by Charles Todd --- 279 pages

Inspector Ian Rutledge is haunted by the horrors he witnessed on the battlefields of the Great War. Lurking in his head he hears the voice of Corporal Hamish MacLeod, a young soldier he was forced by the brutal military code to execute for refusing a direct order in battle. How long, he wonders, before that judgment rebounds on him?

Meanwhile, Rutledge tries desperately to pick up the pieces of his former job as a Scotland Yard Inspector. A dead woman and two missing children bring him to Dorset and the small town of Singleton Magna. Rutledge is dismayed to find another tormented war veteran is the chief suspect in the death of the woman, found lying in a field with her face battered beyond recognition. But the local police have failed to find the two small children supposed to have been with the woman, so Rutledge has been sent to assist with the search.

The local police Inspector believes that the ex-soldier saw the woman and the children from the train as he passed through Singleton Magna, and recognized his wife and children, presumed dead in a German bomb attack on London during the war. He was seen and heard searching for them and threatening his wife for deceiving him, so when the woman's body was discovered, the police arrested him.

But Rutledge realizes there are many discrepancies in the evidence. He questions whether the dead woman was really the man's wife, and whether there were ever any children present at all.  When another battered body is found buried in an isolated spot unlikely to be known to anyone without detailed local knowledge, Rutledge is convinced these murders have a local context that has to do with the private lives of the local gentry, who are not above using their privileged positions to interfere with the investigation for their own purposes. Someone is protecting a murderer. And an innocent man, undone by war and grief, will hang unless Rutledge can bring the crime home to the real killer.

The third book in the Ian Rutledge series, for those fascinated by World War One and its reverberating impact on the lives of those who survived the war only to be wrecked on the shores of a dark and desperate peace. Fans of Jacqueline Winspear's Maisie Dobbs  and Anne Perry's William and Hester Monk series may enjoy this.

Click HERE to read the review from Publisher's Weekly.

Click HERE to read the review from Kirkus Reviews.

A Fine Summer's Day by Charles Todd

A Fine Summer's Day: An Inspector Ian Rutledge Mystery by Charles Todd --- 358 pages

Charles Todd is the pseudonym of a mother-and-son writing team that have produced sixteen critically acclaimed historical mysteries about Scotland Yard Inspector Ian Rutledge, who returns from the trenches of the Great War suffering from amnesia and severe shell shock - what we now know as post traumatic stress disorder - and desperately tries to reclaim his sanity and previous career at Scotland Yard. In each book Rutledge is set to solve a murder that requires him to confront ghosts from the past that continue to haunt him.

Now in the seventeenth book in the series, the authors have written a prequel, allowing us to see Rutledge when he was young and undamaged in mind and body, filled with hopes for a future with the sweetheart he adored. And all the while he is working to solve a series of seemingly unrelated murders spread across England. The method is similar in each case, but the victims seem to have nothing in common. Only by defying his superior, doggedly following his own instinct,s and ignoring the siren call to arms, does Rutledge finally discover the motive, and thus the identity, of the murderer.

A gift to fans of the series and a wonderful place to start for readers who are meeting Ian Rutledge for the first time.

Click HERE to read the New York Times review of A Fine Summer's Day.

Click HERE to visit the author's web site and view a timeline of the series with short descriptions of each book in sequence.