Review: A Test of Wills (Inspector Ian Rutledge #1) by Charles Todd
B Reviews / B Reviews Category / Book ReviewsEnglish historical mystery / Historical / post WWI12 Comments
In 1919, Scotland Yard Inspector Ian Rutledge remains haunted by World War I, where he was forced to have a soldier executed for refusing to fight. When Rutledge is assigned to investigate a murder involving the military, his emotional war wounds flare. It is a case that strikes dangerously close to home–one that will test Rutledge’s precarious grip on his own sanity. A “Publishers Weekly” Best Book selection. Martin’s Press.
Review:
This is a long running mystery series which I had wanted to try for a while, but kept being distracted. When a friend mentioned that she started the first book, I decided that it was a sign and started it too. I found it a bit of a slow start, but overall ended up quite liking it.
As the blurb tells you, Ian Rutledge came back to Scotland Yard after fighting at the front lines of World War One and he came back with physical fatigue and psychological wounds. The soldier he was forced to execute for desertion (since the blurb mentions it I don’t think it is a spoiler) is probably a deepest wound and he carries that soldier within and I am guessing will be doing so during the whole series. I hesitate to spell out exactly what that means because this would be running in the spoiler territory indeed.
Even though our inspector knows that he is not the same person as he was before war – too much pain of all kinds, he wants to come back to at least who he was professionally before going to war .
“He’d learned, in France, to face dying. He could learn, in time, how to face living. It was just getting through the desolation in between that seemed to be beyond him.”
“He hadn’t considered whether the skills and the intuitive grasp of often frail threads of information, which had been his greatest asset, had been damaged along with the balance of his mind by the horrors of the war. Whether he could be a good policeman again. He’d simply expected his ability to come back without effort, like remembering how to ride or how to swim, rusty skills that needed only a new honing . .”
And this part is from later in the book when he is already questioned one of the witnesses:
“It was almost, he thought with one of those leaps of intuition that had served him so well in the past, as if she already knew who the killer was—and was planning her own private retribution . . . . “I can’t imagine how anyone could have done such a terrible thing to him,” she’d said. Not who—how.”
I thought the mystery was interesting and the investigation was good, but I probably had the most pleasure in seeing Ian rediscovering himself and of course not becoming the same person as he was before, since it was impossible, but realizing that he could be a good investigator again even after everything he had been through even if Hamish would probably be with him forever and he won’t be magically cured from that.
Having said that, as much as I liked how Inspector realized at the end what he was missing (literally he realized that he did not question a certain witness and it ended up to be a key to solving the puzzle), the ending itself was a little gimmicky. Again, I cannot say anything because of course it will be a huge spoiler.
Grade: B
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I had the pleasure of meeting Charles Todd when this book came out and before anyone realized he was part of a pseudonymous mother/son writing team. To my everlasting shame, I simply could not square the youngish man who came to our store with the mature, seasoned writing in the book, so I blurted out, “Just how old ARE you?” Ugh. I’m mortified as I type this.
What captured me about this particular book was that opening scene, where Colonel Harris’s rage and anger absolutely leapt from the page. The power of it has stayed with me all these years.
The rest of the series (I may have stopped at 8 or 10) is also well done, particularly because we didn’t have many WWI crime novels then. In that vein, I highly recommend Rennie Airth’s John Madden series, starting with RIVER OF DARKNESS.
@Darlynne: Thanks for sharing . I never met the writers whose books I really love. I have read the second book so far, but I usually stop after four or five books because even the best ones start to feel samey to me if I do read a lot in a row. I will check out John Madden series thank you.
@Sirius, I liked the books I read in the Ian Rutledge series. I do tend to stop after a few for the same reasons you do. I have one of the books from their other series with Bess Crawford which is sitting near the top of my TBR pile.
@Darlynne:
I second the recommendation for Rennie Airth!
@Sydneysider: Oh . Have you tried Bess Crawford before? I will probably still read couple more books with Ian Rutledge but then will go something else.@AMG: Thank you.
RIVER OF DARKNESS by Rennie Airth is on sale at Amazon US today for .99.
Sebastien Japrisot’s novel A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT is a great mystery novel that deals with World War I. Just terrific. It was an international bestseller and was made into a movie starring Audrey Tautou.
@Darlynne: @Janine: Thank you.
I thought both the book and movie of “A Very Long Engagement” were very good, and it was nice to have a relatively happy ending. Another WWI mystery is “The Return of Captain John Emmett”. From the back: London, 1920. In the aftermath of the Great War and a devastating family tragedy, Laurence Bartram has turned his back on the world. But with a well-timed letter, an old flame manages to draw him back in. Mary Emmett’s brother John – like Laurence, an officer during the war – has apparently killed himself while in the care of a remote veteran’s hospital, and Mary needs to know why. AFAIK, however, there are only two books in this series.
As for the Ian Rutledge books, I also stopped after 6 or so. I liked the books and the characters, but perhaps precisely because I did like them so much, I wanted Ian to find some kind of peace and happiness and perhaps even love, but it seemed that was not in the cards. The same for the Beverly Cleverly series about Joe Sandilands, which I liked a lot but gave up on about halfway through. For me, and YMMV, I prefer series where the mystery is solved in one book but where we can see developing relationships and character growth over the series arc.
@Susan/DC: I also liked the Joe Sandilands books and stopped reading those, as well as the Todd books, for the same reasons. Things/people have to change, even if time passes more slowly for the character than the reader.
Since we’re talking about WWI, I’ll mention Robert Goddard’s IN PALE BATTALIONS, one of my favorites of his books. Of course, I don’t remember the details, but I’ve always loved the idea of investigating the past. From the book description:
“Six months after her husband’s sudden death, Leonora Galloway sets off for a holiday in Paris with her daughter Penelope. At last the time has come when secrets can be shared and explanations begin…
Their journey starts with an unscheduled stop at the imposing Thiepval Memorial to the dead of the Battle of the Somme near Amiens. Amongst those commemorated is Leonora’s father. The date of his death is recorded and 30th April, 1916. But Leonora wasn’t born until 14th March 1917.
Penelope at once supposes a simple wartime illegitimacy as the clue to her mother’s unhappy childhood and the family’s sundered connections with her aristocratic heritage, about which she has always known so little.
But nothing could have prepared her, or the reader, for the extraordinary story that is about to unfold.”
I’ll second @Darlynne’s recommendation of Robert Goddard’s In Pale Battalions which I read and enjoyed years ago.
Thank you for the recommendations Susan, Darlynne and Kareni.