Rating:  Summary: Tests your will (in a good way). Review: A Test of Wills by Charles Todd is a great concept and first book of a series. The History is first rate, but the mystery plot could have been a bit more exciting (however realistic procedurals are sometimes filled with frustration). The setting is post World I England in the small town of Warwickshire. Our hero, Inspector Ian Rutledge of Scotland Yard has returned home from the War badly shaken by his experiences. Suffering from shell shock aka "post traumatic stress disorder" he is tormented by Hamish, the voice of a young Scotsman he executed for cowardice. (Some reviwers did not like Hamish and found him distracting. I found nothing wrong with it and is an interesting study in obsession). Upon Rutledges's return, the inspector buries himself in his work and his first case is a scapegoat of failure. Involving the brutal murder of a beloved colonel and the man suspected is a holder of the Queen's cross. There are some interesting twists that will keep you reading further. The history and the setting crackles with realism. The murder grabs your attention and the procedural gets better as you go along. At first, I found the other characters to be wooden and full of cliches. After some thought, (my pinhead) realized that we are looking at the world through Rutledge's eyes. Surviving the war, those eyes and his outlook on life possess a knowledge that goes beyond that of everyday folk. An existensialism of his very own, if you will. Highly recommend! Thank you Mr. Todd.
Rating:  Summary: Good twist Review: An interesting murder mystery with a flawed detective (Inspector Ian Rutledge suffering from shellshock). The detective and his battle with the past (in the form of his conversations with the dead soldier Hamish) were the heart of the story and really captured the aftermath of the terror of WWI.
Rating:  Summary: Haunting and Evocative Review: Charles Todd re-creates the era of 1918 England so vividly that I'm walking around in a kind of an historical daze, part of my mind on work and part in an English village 85 years ago. I'll admit that I liked his later books a bit better than this first one, but as a whole this series does an incredible job at evoking a mood and a time that is far different than our modern world. Todd portrays so well the shocking dissonance between the England of pre-World War I, of laughing girls in white dresses with silk sashes playing lawn tennis, and the world of gaunt, haunted veterans who returned from the war shell-shocked and touched by death. His main character is such a veteran, and it is the story of how he tries to fit back into his pre-war life that is the point of these books rather than the actual mystery he is trying to solve. So, if you are more interested in characters than the mechanics of the plot, you are going to love this series!
Rating:  Summary: excellent mystery Review: I bought this book because it was listed to be one of the top 100 mysteries of the 20th century. I can often figure out "whodunit" when I read mysteries, and I appreciate a book where I am unable to do so, as happened here. Yet when the truth was revealed, I realized that I had been given all of the clues. I thought the character of Inspector Ian Rutledge was very well drawn; I was really able to sympathize with his struggle with shell shock, self-doubt and lost love. Although his shell shock contributed a lot to how he dealt with the murder case, it didn't distract from the mystery. His shell shock manifests as the voice of Hamish, a soldier under his command, who Rutledge had shot for desertion on the front in France. Some of Hamish's comments were obscure, but I didn't think he got in the way. The story held me in a pretty good grip, accelerating to the end. It was hard to put down in the last several chapters. All in all, very well done, and I think deserving of a spot on the top 100 mysteries.
Rating:  Summary: excellent mystery Review: I bought this book because it was listed to be one of the top 100 mysteries of the 20th century. I can often figure out "whodunit" when I read mysteries, and I appreciate a book where I am unable to do so, as happened here. Yet when the truth was revealed, I realized that I had been given all of the clues. I thought the character of Inspector Ian Rutledge was very well drawn; I was really able to sympathize with his struggle with shell shock, self-doubt and lost love. Although his shell shock contributed a lot to how he dealt with the murder case, it didn't distract from the mystery. His shell shock manifests as the voice of Hamish, a soldier under his command, who Rutledge had shot for desertion on the front in France. Some of Hamish's comments were obscure, but I didn't think he got in the way. The story held me in a pretty good grip, accelerating to the end. It was hard to put down in the last several chapters. All in all, very well done, and I think deserving of a spot on the top 100 mysteries.
Rating:  Summary: Historical Mystery or Mystery Pastiche Review: I think some of the confusion about Todd's work is the fact that Todd is not trying to write an imitation of a golden age mystery. He is trying to recreate the period just after the end of World War I when Britain was adjusting to the momentous changes forced on it by the war inasfar as it aids in the story that Todd is telling. Todd's interest is in the effect of the war on the individual and society as played out in the homicide career of Ian Rutledge. The over-riding story arc involves Rutledge's antagonist at Scotland Yard who is trying to set Rutledge up for a fall. This is not a spoiler because it is revealed very early in the book. This specific story is about the murder of a local landowner who seemed to have no enemies, although he had recently quarreled with his ward's fiance, a war hero high in the esteem of the nation and the Royal Family. This political hot potato is tossed to Rutledge to resolve. Failure could mean the end of his career. Success could mean the end of his career. For those who think that the sexual frankness of some of the characters in this book is out of period, they need to look at the social history of the time rather than what one thinks the social history is. Remember Lady Chatterley's Lover and the Well of Loneliness were both published in this decade. And even though both of the books were pronounced obscene, they were still gobbled up by the reading public. Although his prose is at times gothic and overwrought, Todd also floats some very interesting ideas. The series clearly, at this stage at least is worth following.
Rating:  Summary: Historical Mystery or Mystery Pastiche Review: I think some of the confusion about Todd's work is the fact that Todd is not trying to write an imitation of a golden age mystery. He is trying to recreate the period just after the end of World War I when Britain was adjusting to the momentous changes forced on it by the war inasfar as it aids in the story that Todd is telling. Todd's interest is in the effect of the war on the individual and society as played out in the homicide career of Ian Rutledge. The over-riding story arc involves Rutledge's antagonist at Scotland Yard who is trying to set Rutledge up for a fall. This is not a spoiler because it is revealed very early in the book. This specific story is about the murder of a local landowner who seemed to have no enemies, although he had recently quarreled with his ward's fiance, a war hero high in the esteem of the nation and the Royal Family. This political hot potato is tossed to Rutledge to resolve. Failure could mean the end of his career. Success could mean the end of his career. For those who think that the sexual frankness of some of the characters in this book is out of period, they need to look at the social history of the time rather than what one thinks the social history is. Remember Lady Chatterley's Lover and the Well of Loneliness were both published in this decade. And even though both of the books were pronounced obscene, they were still gobbled up by the reading public. Although his prose is at times gothic and overwrought, Todd also floats some very interesting ideas. The series clearly, at this stage at least is worth following.
Rating:  Summary: Interesting idea for a mystery Review: Inspector Ian Rutledge has returned from four years service in the trenches of World War I, and Scotland Yard has assigned him his first case after his return. He has an enemy in the Yard who assigns him a particularly tough case, envisioning him messing it up and arresting the obvious prime suspect, another war hero who was awarded the Victoria Cross. Rutledge balks at making a hasty arrest, however, and spends a week in the English countryside investigating thoroughly. Rutledge is an interesting character. He's haunted by the war, and by things he did in the middle of it. He hears a voice in his head, often, a particular individual who served with him in the war, but has opinions on everything that passes within Rutledge's view. There are other characters in the book, all well-drawn and interesting, and there's much about the war and its effect on people, and their psyches. The temptation is to compare this novel with Christie, Sayers, or perhaps Stout. Frankly, this is a bit thin. All of these writers wrote about their own era, more or less, and felt less need to recreate a bygone era. They also wrote in an era where elaborate plots and motives were almost required in mystery fiction, while characters were almost unimportant. Christie was especially notorious in this regard. The present author, by comparison, has produced a full, well-written novel with a puzzle in it. The clues that present themselves towards the solution of the story aren't as obvious signposts as Christie's, or Sayers' famous red herrings, but they are there, and if you read carefully enough I suppose you could solve the mystery (I never try). The plot does drag in the middle a bit. Rutledge doesn't do anything for two hundred pages except question people repeatedly, asking the same questions and getting fuller answers as he persists in his investigation. When the action does finally heat up, it's only a bit, and the climax comes rather suddenly. Given that, and the other complaints about the book enumerated above, I did enjoy this book, and will look for the others in the series.
Rating:  Summary: The shell-shocked detective Review: Set in 1919, Todd's fine first novel features Scotland Yard detective Ian Rutledge, returned from the Great War with a secret - he suffers from shell shock and is haunted by the loud, taunting, cynical voice of a dead fellow soldier.
A spiteful, jealous colleague who harbors suspicions about Rutledge's mental health manages to have him assigned to a no-win case in a small village - the murder of a popular military officer. The chief suspect is a war hero and friend of the Prince of Wales. Worse, the chief witness is a deranged shell-shock victim.
As Rutledge tramps over the countryside, making his dogged way among the resentful relatives and friends of the victim (who have already chosen a convenient scapegoat), feretting out their painful secrets, his own precarious state threatens to expose him with every brush of a raw nerve.
Todd populates his novel with complex characters, each with the characteristic closeness of country villagers, and constructs an absorbing mystery (with perhaps a too surprising solution) in an atmospheric setting, but the real star of this novel is the protagonist. Without being overdone, Rutledge's edgy reality is gripping, the gibbering gnome on his shoulder a constant goad
.
This is still the best of the series.
Rating:  Summary: Imaginative, original, outstanding Review: Test of Wills is about Ian Rutledge, a Scotland Yard inspector and a survivor of World War I shell shock. The war has destroyed his engagement to the weak Jean who is unable to deal with this returning soldier and dumps him while he is still recovering. Worse yet, he is haunted by the soldier whom he ordered shot for desertion, a Scot named Hamish, who reminds Rutledge often of his widowed bride left alone...thanks to Rutledge. Rutledge cannot shut out Hamish' voice but manages to continue his work as a sleuth. And he is quite imaginative in untangling the complex threads of deceit and murder when he takes on tracking down who killed Colonel Charles Harris - a local leading light of whom everyone has nothing but good to say. As Rutledge pokes about, carrying on conversations with folks, it's his uncanny insight into human nature that leads him toward the solution -- an insight augmented by his tortuous relationship with his own personal ghost.
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