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An Inspector Ian Rutledge Mystery
by Charles ToddReaders first met Ian Rutledge in A Test of
Wills (1996) set in 1919. Rutledge, who left a brilliant
career at Scotland Yard (British national police headquarters)
in 1914 has returned at the end of the Great War, but he is
burdened with the heavy secret that he is still suffering from
shell shock. With him almost constantly is the cynical, taunting
voice of Hamish, a young Scots corporal he was forced to have
executed on the battlefield for refusing to fight.
The following ten stories to date each revisit Rutledge one
month after the previous one, following the war-damaged
detective on his cases that take him to different parts of rural
England. The authors (a mother-son writing team) are consciously
following this slow pace because they, like many of their
readers, are particularly interested to explore the healing
process of their wounded protagonist. They also choose to set
each mystery in a village or small town location as "the
villages were still more or less prewar, compared to the
increasingly modern and sophisticated metropolis, and therefore
infinitely more interesting in their variety of reaction to
change".
In A False Mirror Rutledge continues to be haunted by his
time in the trenches, represented by the voice of Hamish who
speaks to Rutledge with warnings and advice. Rutledge is busy on
a case involving a murder in Green Park in the center of London
when he is suddenly taken off the case and sent to the scenic
fishing village of Hampton Regis on the south coast of England,
where a man who served under Rutledge at the Somme is accused of
brutally beating Matthew Hamilton, a local man and foreign
diplomat.
The villagers believe Mallory wants Hamilton dead so he can
reclaim Felicity, Mallory's former fiancée who didn't wait for
him to return from the war. A scenario that reminds Rutledge of
his own wartime abandonment.
Mallory, convinced that he will never get a fair hearing from
the local authorities because the evidence against him is
circumstantial but compelling, has taken Felicity and her maid
hostage and refuses to negotiate with anyone other than
Rutledge. Despite his personal dislike of the man, Rutledge
becomes convinced that Mallory is innocent and that there is
something more sinister and complex behind the brutal beating
than is first seen.
For anyone already familiar with this series it should be a
given that the authors deliver a neatly packaged plot laced with
psychological suspense reminiscent of Agatha Christine, Arthur
Conan Doyle and P.D. James, but what raises the series above the
mass of historical detective mysteries are the memorable
characters, the subtlety of the plot-twists, the evocative,
fully-realized settings and, most of all, the war-damaged,
painfully slow-healing character of Rutledge himself.
It is possible to delve into this series at any point, but if you wish to read in series order, it is as follows:
This review was originally published in The BookBrowse Review in February 2007, and has been updated for the January 2008 edition. Click here to go to this issue.
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