CRITICAL ACCLAIM FOR CHARLES TODD’s
INSPECTOR IAN RUTLEDGE SERIES
SEARCH THE DARK
“I won’t soon forget author Charles Todd’s Ian Rutledge in SEARCH THE DARK.”
—The Cleveland Plain Dealer
“Entertaining, well plotted and perfect for vacation reading.”
—Lawton (OK) Constitution
“The third compelling Ian Rutledge mystery takes the sensitive and appealing Scotland Yard inspector, a former WWI officer, to the countryside of Dorset … [A] fine period mystery.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A well-crafted historical.”
—Library Journal
“SEARCH THE DARK continues in the fine tradition of its predecessors by serving up a complex, entertaining mystery as well as insight into the aftermath of war.”
—Harriet Klausner, Painted Rock Reviews
“Sensitively written and intelligently plotted, SEARCH THE DARK is a magnificent story of the lost generation and the agonies they suffered. As compelling as a Hemingway novel, this book totally involves the reader in the characters and their fates. The tale is so intense and involving that you will close the book with a feeling of regret and a longing to find out what fate holds in store for Rutledge.”
—Romantic Times (4½ Stars)
WINGS OF FIRE
“[Todd wraps] his challenging plot, complex characters and subtle psychological insights in thick layers of atmosphere.”
—Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review
“Fine writing. A spectacular conclusion that rejuvenates the cliché ‘It was a dark and stormy night.’ ”
—Washington Post Book World
“A strong mystery, filled with fine characterizations, a superb eye for Cornwall and for post World War I attitudes, and a wise and wily explanation of how some of us deal with guilt.”
—Robin Winks, The Boston Globe
“Todd writes exceptionally about a time when people found not just meaning but healing in poetry, when intuition was viewed as kind of ‘second sight,’ and when everyone was stamped by war—not just the legless men, but also the women who lost their loves and so their futures.”
—San Jose Mercury News
“Novelist Charles Todd now joins that growing little circle of American authors like Elizabeth George and Martha Grimes who have made themselves at home in the exclusive field of the British literary mystery.”
—The Buffalo News
“Todd’s writing is graceful and evocative of a bygone time and place.”
—The Miami Herald
“[Rutledge] makes a welcome return in the haunting WINGS OF FIRE … Thoughtful and evocative, Todd’s tale offers interesting, three-dimensional characters.”
—The Orlando Sentinel
“Splendid imagery, in-depth characterization, and glimpses of more than one wounded psyche: an excellent historical mystery.”
—Library Journal
“A brilliant return … Memorable characters, subtle plot twists, the evocative seaside setting and descriptions of architecture, the moors and the sea fully reward the attention this novel commands.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
A TEST OF WILLS
named a New York Times Notable Book of the year
and one of Publishers Weekly’s six best mysteries of the year
“Both a meticulously wrought puzzle and harrowing psychological drama about a shellshocked police inspector who investigates a murder.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“The emotional and physical carnage of World War I is used to remarkable effect in A TEST OF WILLS, an excellent new mystery and, one hopes, the first of a series.”
—Chicago Tribune
“Psychologically sophisticated, tautly written, and craftily plotted.”
—San Jose Mercury News
“Todd seems to have perfect pitch in his ability to capture the tenor and nuances of English country life with its clearly defined social strata. A TEST OF WILLS may on the surface be another whodunit, but Todd raises disturbing issues of war and peace that still confront us today.”
—Orlando Sentinel
“A newcomer returns us to the essential pleasures of the well-crafted puzzle in this debut, the absorbing story of a young British WWI veteran returning from the war to his job as a Scotland yard Inspector … Todd, an American, depicts the outer and inner worlds of his character with authority and sympathy as he closes in on his surprising—and convincing—conclusion.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Strong, elegant prose; detailed surroundings and sound plotting characterize this debut historical.… Highly re commended.”
—Library Journal
“The 20th century hasn’t happened in Upper Streetham, which seems to have been cast out of REBECCA, or in first-novelist Todd’s deeply old-fashioned storytelling, which eschews the slightest impropriety in favor of the patient subtlety and circumlocution that held readers in thrall 70 years ago. A feast for the like-minded.”
—Kirkus Reviews
SEARCH
THE DARK
CHARLES TODD
For J.
For all those places on the map
and all the memories that went with them.
1
The murder appeared to be a crime of passion, the killer having left a trail of evidence behind him that even a blind man might have followed.
It was the identity of the victim, not the murderer, that brought Scotland Yard into the case.
No one knew who she was. Or, more correctly perhaps, what name she might have used since 1916. And what had become of the man and the two children who had been with her at the railway station? Were they a figment of the killer’s overheated imagination? Or were their bodies yet to be discovered?
The police in Dorset were quite happy to turn the search over to the Yard. And the Yard was very happy indeed to oblige, in the person of Inspector Ian Rutledge.
It began simply enough, with the London train pulling into the station at the small Dorset town of Singleton Magna. The stop there was always brief. Half a dozen passengers got off, and another handful generally got on, heading south to the coast. A few boxes and sacks were offloaded with efficiency, and the train rolled out almost before the acrid smoke of its arrival had blown away.
Today, late August and quite hot for the season, there was a man standing by the lowered window in the second-class car, trying to find a bit of air. His shirt clung to his back under the shabby suit, and his dark hair lay damply across his forehead. His face was worn, dejection sunk deep in the lines about his mouth and in the circles under tired eyes. He was young, but youth was gone.