Ian Rutledge Series – Page 2 – Charles Todd

The Red Door

Ian Rutledge Series – Book 12

The Red Door by Charles Todd — Ian Rutledge – Book 12

June 1920 – At the end of a terrible war, a woman painted the door to her house red to welcome her husband home from the Front . . . but he never returned. Two years later, in the English summer of 1920, she lies lifeless behind that door, savagely bludgeoned to death. In London, a man suffering from a mysterious illness goes missing, and his family members offer conflicting accounts of one another’s whereabouts at the time of his disappearance. Then, suddenly, he reappears, miraculously recovered, offering no clues to the puzzle or to the reason behind his brothers’ and sister’s silence and rage. Now Inspector Ian Rutledge, still haunted by the battlefield’s horrors, must solve two possibly connected mysteries. He must uncover the family secret that nearly drove one man mad, and bring a ruthless killer to justice.

“One of the strongest entries yet in a series that shows no sign of losing steam….Once again Todd perfectly balances incisive portraits of all the characters, not just the complex and original lead.”
— Publishers Weekly (starred review) on The Red Door

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A Matter of Justice

Ian Rutledge Series – Book 11

A Matter of Justice by Charles Todd — Ian Rutledge – Book 11

May 1920 – At the turn of the century, in a war taking place far from England, two soldiers chance upon an opportunity that will change their lives forever. To take advantage of it, they will do the unthinkable and then put the past behind them. Twenty years later, a successful London businessman is found savagely and bizarrely murdered in a medieval tithe barn on his estate in Somerset. Called upon to investigate, Rutledge soon discovers that the victim was universally despised. Even the man’s wife—who appears to be his wife in name only—and the town’s police inspector are suspect. But who among the many hated enough to kill?

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A Pale Horse

Ian Rutledge Series – Book 10

A Pale Horse by Charles Todd — Ian Rutledge – 10

April 1920 – In the ruins of Yorkshire’s Fountains Abbey lies the body of a man wrapped in a cloak, the face covered by a gas mask. Next to him is a book on alchemy, which belongs to the schoolmaster, a conscientious objector in the Great War. Who is this man, and is the investigation into his death being manipulated by a thirst for revenge? Meanwhile, the British War Office is searching for a missing man of their own, someone whose war work was so secret that even Rutledge isn’t told his real name or what he did. Here is a puzzle requiring all of Rutledge’s daring and skill, for there are layers of lies and deception, while a ruthless killer is determined to hold on to freedom at any cost.

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A False Mirror

Ian Rutledge Series – Book 9

A False Mirror by Charles Todd — Ian Rutledge – Book 9

March 1920 – An officer who served with Rutledge in the trenches of France before being sent back to England under suspicious circumstances has now been accused of savagely beating the husband of the woman he still loves. The suspect has taken the wife hostage, threatening to kill her and her maid unless Rutledge takes charge of the investigation. Although the case painfully mirrors Rutledge’s own past and the love he lost to another man, he cannot refuse it. When the unconscious brutalized victim vanishes without a trace, it’s clear that this peaceful little town hides a vicious murderer and secrets powerful enough to kill for.

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A Long Shadow

Ian Rutledge Series – Book 8

A Long Shadow by Charles Todd — Ian Rutledge – Book 8

January 1920 – Scotland Yard’s Inspector Ian Rutledge brought the Great War home with him, and its horrors haunt him still. On New Year’s Eve 1919, he finds a brass cartridge casing, similar to countless others he’d seen on the battlefield, on the steps of a friend’s house. Soon there are more, purposely placed where he is sure to discover them. Unexpectedly drawn away from London to a small Northamptonshire village, he investigates the strange case of a local constable shot with a bow and arrow in an allegedly spirit-infested wood. Here among the taciturn townsfolk, embroiled in a three-year-old mystery of a vanished young girl, Rutledge hopes to keep his own ghosts at bay. But his stalker has followed him. And now the emotionally shattered policeman walking the razor’s edge of sanity must somehow keep his balance long enough to discover who is tracking him… and why.

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A Cold Treachery

Ian Rutledge Series – Book 7

A Cold Treachery by Charles Todd — Ian Rutledge – Book 7

December 1919 – 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? Anyone 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.

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A Fearsome Doubt

Ian Rutledge Series – Book 6

A Fearsome Doubt by Charles Todd — Ian Rutledge – Book 6

November 1919 – In 1912 Ian Rutledge watched as a man was condemned to hang for the murders of elderly women. Rutledge helped gather the evidence that sent Ben Shaw to the gallows. And when justice was done, Rutledge closed the door on the case. But Shaw was not easily forgotten.

Now, seven years later, that grim trial returns in the form of Ben Shaw’s widow Nell, bringing Rutledge evidence she is convinced will prove her husband’s innocence. It’s a belief fraught with peril, threatening both Rutledge’s professional stature and his faith in his judgment. But there is a darker reason for Rutledge’s reluctance. Murder brings him back to Kent where, days earlier, he’d glimpsed an all-too-familiar face beyond the leaping flames of a bonfire. Soon an unexpected encounter revives the end of his own war, as the country prepares for a somber commemoration on the anniversary of the Armistice. To battle the unsettled past and the haunted present at the same time is an appalling mandate.

And the people around him? among them the attractive widow of a friend, a remarkable woman who survived the Great Indian Mutiny; a bitter, dying barrister; and a man whose name he never knew—unwittingly compete with the grieving Nell Shaw. They’ll demand more than Rutledge can give, unaware that he is already carrying the burden of shell shock? and the voice of Hamish MacLeod, the soldier he was forced to execute in the war. The killer in Marling is surprisingly adept at escaping detection. And Ben Shaw’s past is a tangle of unsettling secrets that may or may not be true. Rutledge must walk a tortuous line between two murderers…one reaching out to ruin him, the other driven to destroy him.

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Watchers of Time

Ian Rutledge Series – Book 5

Watchers of Time by Charles Todd — Ian Rutledge – Book 5

October 1919 – In Osterley, a marshy Norfolk backwater, a man lies dying on a rainy autumn night. While natural causes will surely claim Herbert Baker’s life in a matter of hours, his last request baffles his family and friends.

Baker, a devout Anglican, inexplicably demands to see the town’s Catholic priest for a last confession. The old man dies without knowing that the very priest who gave him comfort will follow him to the grave just a few weeks later — the victim of an appalling murder.

The local police are convinced the evidence points to an interrupted robbery, and have named a suspect, Matthew Walsh. But the dead priest’s bishop insists that Scotland Yard oversee the investigation. A simple task for Rutledge, a man not yet well enough to return to full duty.

The Inspector draws on years of experience and a war-honed intuition as he finds himself uncovering secrets that the local authorities would prefer not to see explored. Surely, they reason, it is better to charge an outsider — Matthew Walsh — with murder than to learn that someone in this tightly knit community would commit such a horrendous crime. And yet there are those, Rutledge soon discovers, who held grudges against the priest that had little to do with God or the Church.

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Legacy of the Dead

Ian Rutledge Series – Book 4

Charles Todd, Legacy of the Dead — Ian Rutledge – Book 4

September 1919 – Just as Rutledge thinks he has come to terms—of a sort—with the voice that haunts him, he’s sent to northern England to find the missing daughter of a woman who once slept with a king. Little does he know that his search will take him to Scotland, and to the woman Hamish would have married if he’d lived. But Fiona is certain to hang for murdering a mother to steal her child, and she doesn’t know that Rutledge killed Hamish on the battlefield when she turns to him for help. He couldn’t save Hamish—but Rutledge is honor bound to protect Fiona and the small child named for him.

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Search the Dark

Ian Rutledge Series – Book 3

Search the Dark by Charles Todd — Ian Rutledge – Book 3

The introspective hero of wings of Fire and A Test of Wills (Edgar Award nominee) return in a provocative new mystery. Inspector Ian Rutledge, haunted by memories of World War I and the harrowing presence of Hamish, a dead soldier, is “a superb characterization of a man whose wounds have made him a stranger in his own land.” (The New York Times Book Review)

August 1919 – A dead woman two missing children bring Inspector Rutledge to the lovely Dorset town of Singeton Magna, where the truth lies buried with the dead. A tormented veteran whose family died in an enemy bombing is the chief suspect. Dubious, Rutledge presses on to find the real killer. And when another body is found in the rich Dorset earth, his quest reaches into the secret lives of villagers and Londoners whose privileged positions and private passions give them every reason to thwart him. Someone is protecting a murderer. And two children are out there, somewhere, the dark…

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