It is much harder to do a series character than most mystery authors seem to think. You have to make your protagonist interesting, perhaps with a gimmick that can be used to intrigue the reader. You have to make the character likable but not too saintly, vulnerable but not too fragile.

You have to reintroduce the character in each new book for readers just coming to the series, and you have to make the character grow and be dynamic from one book to the next, but not to grow too far from the roots that made the character popular in the first place. It’s a tall task and it can be very limiting.

That’s why it’s such a joy to read of the adventures of Inspector Ian Rutledge. Rutledge is the creation of Charles Todd, a pseudonymous American mother-and-son team which has crafted Rutledge as a traumatized British ex-soldier from World War I.

During the years of 1919 and 1920, he is trying to rebuild his life as a police inspector, but he is haunted by three terrible spectres: the loss of his fiancé, Jean, who is no longer interested in him; Chief Superintendent Bowles, who hates him and wants to destroy his career; and most ominously, the ghost of Hamish MacLeod, a man who Rutledge served with in the war and was forced to kill for dereliction of duty, and who now follows him around, commenting on cases. Quite a bit of baggage, eh?

A TEST OF WILLS, written 10 years ago but newly reissued in paperback, is the first in the series. In it, the popular Col. Harris is murdered on his own farmland. The primary suspect is one Capt. Mark Wilton, who was about to marry Harris’ ward. But Wilton and Harris got along famously. And Wilton is a war hero, having won the Victoria Cross and being friendly with those at Buckingham Palace.

Why would he have killed his friend? Circumstantial evidence piles up, and Rutledge realizes his career is in the balance as he engages in a test of wills with not only the suspect, but also his own terrified conscience.

The ninth book in the series, A FALSE MIRROR, we reviewed very positively here. Directly before that comes A LONG SHADOW.

In A LONG SHADOW, Rutledge leaves a dinner party and stumbles over a machine gun bullet casing that has a death’s head carved on its surface. It was not there when he entered the party. Is it a warning? A threat? And then he finds more of the blasted things!

He’s remanded to the tiny town of Dudlington, where the local constable has been shot in the back with an arrow. The constable is implicated by gossip in the disappearance of a local young beauty. Rutledge must solve both the shooting and the disappearance, and there’s always those cartridges to worry about.

Almost every book in the series has the same faults: way too many characters who are easy to confuse, and a technical weakness in describing place. The writing duo creates these marvelous little mini-worlds of post-WWI Britain, but can’t quite bring it across in the writing.

One is quickly overwhelmed with where the grocer’s shop sits in relation to the haberdasher’s, and this can be a bother for some readers. A quick solution to this mess would be a few illustrated maps or even just one in the front papers. Book publishers used to do this all the time and created added charm and depth for the series, but we see less of it nowadays.

Thankfully, some of this is mooted by the strengths that are prevalent in every installment. There is always something happening in a Todd book. You can skip over some minute terrain details when you realize that the plot is moving, characters are performing actions (and they seem to do so whether the author is telling you about them or not), and the story is relentlessly driving to its inevitable conclusion.

The Inspector Ian Rutledge series is classic mystery detective fiction – light on the gore, heavy on plot and atmospheric detail. They are highly recommended for the connoisseur. –Mark Rose

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OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
A FALSE MIRROR by Charles Todd