A Cold Treachery (Inspector Ian Rutledge Mysteries)
by Charles Todd
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Book Summary Information
Author: Charles ToddEdition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2005-08-30
ISBN: 0553586610
Number of pages: 416
Publisher: Bantam
Book Reviews of A Cold Treachery (Inspector Ian Rutledge Mysteries)
Book Review: What a Find!
Summary: 5 Stars
If you like good edge of your seat whodunits set in quaintly atmospheric British locales, if you like a story where every character may have ample reason to have done away with the deceased, if you like a yarn that brings in some psychology and even some of the "big questions" of life, if you like eccentric but believable supporting characters, if you like to be entertained and at the same time, learn just a bit about a time gone by, if you like to see justice done and all of the loose ends tied up by the last page, look no further than here, and at all of the Charles Todd, Inspector Ian Rutledge mysteries.
Having cut my teeth on Agatha Christie and then savored the elegant sophistication of Miss Dorothy L Sayers, I have been -- how shall we put it -- eager for mysteries that come up to those high standards. Often disappointed. Until now.
Charles Todd's multi-dimensional, flawed Scotland Yard Inspector Ian Rutledge is appealing, endearing and real. He is not a caricature detective, nor a foil for red herrings and twisted plots (even though they abound in Todd's works). His persona is such that we would enjoy a book about his life that had NO mystery to it... Not that I am suggesting such a move to the authors....
Speaking of authors... Yes plural. Having read one book, I kept thinking, who is this author. Turns out that Charles Todd is American, not British, and Charles Todd is actually a mother and son team, writing together to create these wonderful books set in post W W I Britain.
And then there is Hamish, Ian's ghostly alter-ego, traveling companion, and imaginary friend. When my local bookstore owner told me the basics about Ian and his now-dead Scottish sergeant, who likes to ride in the back seat of Rutledge's car and "back seat drive" the investigations, I thought this was all too droll. Well, droll it is but it works--surprisingly well. To the point that the reader finds himself or herself wondering what Hamish thinks of this or that turn of events, even when Hamish is silent.
This is the first of Charles Todd's Rutledge mysteries that I read--and then I went on to the first in the series: Test of Wills. I enjoyed reading them in this way, and in fact was hooked. (And then went on to the others). But the reader may want to read them in order. Test of Wills, Wings of Fire, Search the Dark, Legacy of the Dead, Watchers of Time, A Fearsome Doubt, A Cold Treachery, A Long Shadow. There is also a stand-alone Todd mystery called Murder Stone. Read more about them at: www.Charlestodd.com
Todd intertwines the supporting characters from book to book, so that Rutledge's and Hamish's friends and family appear in more than one book, at some times, mentioned and other times, key to the story.
This book, about a missing boy and his murdered family in a lonely spot between the Lake District and the Dales, is well worth your time and attention.
If you find this review helpful you might want to read some of my other reviews, including those on subjects ranging from biography to architecture, as well as religion and fiction
Summary of A Cold Treachery (Inspector Ian Rutledge Mysteries)
Charles Todd returns to the world of Scotland Yard?s Inspector Ian Rutledge in a series that the New York Times Book Review called ?harrowing psychological drama? and the Washington Post Book World hailed as ?among the most intelligent and affecting being written these days.? This time the embattled Inspector has met his match hunting a brutal killer across a frozen hell and the one witness who may have survived a crime of?A COLD TREACHERY
?You?ll hang for this?see if you don?t! That?s my revenge! And you?ll think about that when the rope goes around your neck and the black hood comes down?.?
Called out by Scotland Yard into the teeth of a violent blizzard, Inspector Ian Rutledge finds himself confronted with one of the most savage murders he has ever encountered. Rutledge might have expected such unspeakable carnage on the World War I battlefields, where he?d lost much of his soul?and his sanity?but not in an otherwise peaceful farm kitchen in remote Urskdale.
Someone has murdered the Elcott family at their table without the least sign of struggle. Was the killer someone the young family knew and trusted? When the victims are tallied the local police are in for another shock: One of the Elcotts? children, a boy named Josh, is missing.
Now the Inspector must race to uncover a murderer and to save a child before he?s silenced by the merciless elements?or the even colder hands of a killer. Haunted and goaded by the soldier-ghost of his own tortured war past, Rutledge will discover the tragedy of war that splintered one marriage?and pulled together another.
Love, jealousy, greed, revenge?or was it some twisted combination of all of them? Any one could lead a man or woman to murder. What had the Elcotts done to ignite their killer?s rage? With time running out, Rutledge knows all too well that such a cold-blooded murderer could be hiding somewhere in the blinding snow?
preparing to strike again.
From the Hardcover edition.
Integral to most crime tales is the unearthing of concealed and unfavorable facts about suspected malefactors. But the mother-son duo who write under the nom de plume "Charles Todd" are particularly adept, in their historical novels featuring Scotland Yard Inspector Ian Rutledge, at exploiting painful secrets as tools in developing both character and plot. It's rare, in a Todd tale, that even the innocent should escape unscathed. The authors demonstrate their skills once more in A Cold Treachery, which sends the shell-shocked and lonely Rutledge to probe the winter massacre of a sheep-farming family in northern England, at the same time as he searches for the missing and only witness to that chilling savagery.
"It was beyond comprehension," we're told of the December 1919 violence, near the rustic Lake District town of Urskdale, that left Gerald and Grace Elcott and three of their progeny shot to death. A fourth child, 10-year-old Josh Robinson, is nowhere to be found. He's thought to have fled from the scene, only to have perished in a recent blizzard. Coming off the grim proceedings recalled in A Fearsome Doubt, Rutledge--shackled as always to the nattering ghost of Hamish MacLeod, a Scotsman he'd ordered executed on a World War I battlefield--must determine whether the murderer was a passing stranger, or a local who'd previously concealed his or her aptitude for barbarity--and might kill again. Gerald Elcott's less-successful brother, Paul, has ample motive (he?s next in line to inherit their clan's farm), as does Grace's sister, Janet Ashton, who just happens to arrive in Urskdale with a gun in hand (supposedly to protect her sibling from Paul's anger). Yet there's another, more frightening possibility--that Josh, Gerald's stepson, upset by the breakup of his parents, committed these atrocities. Desperate for clues, and with his impatient superior threatening to replace him on this case, Rutledge still can't claim to know who, or what, was behind the carnage.
After their disappointing standalone, The Murder Stone, it's a relief to see the Todd pair return to the "gloomy, defeated and exhausted" postwar England of Ian Rutledge, where no end of dire dramas appear to lurk. Like its half-dozen predecessors, stretching back to A Test of Wills, A Cold Treachery satisfies with its copious period details, characters traumatized by fate and failures, and a bedeviled young protagonist who must solve other people's problems before his own. And even as Hamish seems here to slip further into the background, there's finally the prospect of Rutledge finding companionship of a more corporeal sort. --J. Kingston Pierce
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