The Gate Keeper by Charles Todd: Book Beginning

The Gate Keeper by Charles Todd,

Paperback published by William Morrow, November 2018

20th in the Inspector Ian Rutledge series! Going strong.

"Ian Rutledge narrowly misses a motorcar stopped in the middle of a desolate road. Standing beside the vehicle is a woman with blood on her hands and a dead man at her feet.

She swears she didn’t kill Stephen Wentworth."

That's the setting for this latest murder mystery and police procedural, set in Suffolk, England.

Book beginning:
Ian Rutledge drove through the night, his mind only partly on the road unwinding before him. He was north of London, and a little to the east of it as well. But he had no particular destination in mind. 

At this late hour, he should have been asleep in his flat in London. He'd gone there with that in mind, but as soon as he had crossed the threshold it had felt different. Stuffy. Claustrophobic. Almost alien - it was where he lived, but it was not his home, had never really been his home....

Page 56:
"He wanted to come home, but he waited too long. The wonderful, foolish man."

Do these excerpts grab you as a reader or not?
Memes: The Friday 56. Grab a book, turn to page 56 or 56% of your eReader. Find any sentence that grabs you. Post it, and add your URL post in Linky at Freda's Voice. Also visit Book Beginning at Rose City Reader

A Pattern of Lies by Charles Todd: Waiting on Wednesday

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted by Breaking the Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating. 

A Pattern of Lies: A Bess Crawford Mystery #7 by Charles Todd, to be released August 18, 2015; William Morrow
Genre: historical mystery

An explosion and fire at the Ashton Gunpowder Mill in Kent has killed over a hundred men. It’s called an appalling tragedy—until suspicion and rumor raise the specter of murder. While visiting the Ashton family, Bess Crawford finds herself caught up in a venomous show of hostility that doesn’t stop with Philip Ashton’s arrest. Indeed, someone is out for blood, and the household is all but under siege. 
The only known witness to the tragedy is now at the Front in France. Bess is asked to find him.(goodreads)

I have read several of the Bess Crawford mysteries and am looking forward to this one.

What new release are you waiting for?

An Unmarked Grave by Charles Todd: Book Tour/Review

"But I thought he had felt like so many men had, that the only end to their suffering would be death, and home seemed so very far away and unreachable." (ch. 19)

Title:  An Unmarked Grave by Charles Todd
Hardcover; published June 5, 2012 by William Morrow

About the book: This is the fourth in the Bess Crawford Mystery series, featuring a WWI nurse from England who plays amateur sleuth. In 1918, Bess travels to France to care for wounded soldiers as well as the many soldiers stricken by the Spanish flu epidemic. At the beginning of the book, Bess is shown the body of Major Carson, an old family friend, lying among the flu victims.

"He is not an influenza victim," Private Wilson said. "Look at him." (ch. 1)

Bess realizes that the major's neck has been broken and that he must have been murdered.  When Private  Wilson is found hanged and his death declared a suicide, Bess knows she has two mysteries to solve. She wants to help the wife of the Major and also clear the name of Private Wilson, who she thinks fell victim to foul play. She also has to discover if the deaths are connected.

My comments: I enjoyed A Bitter Truth, the previous mystery in the series, and thought this novel is as good in plot and characterization. It also gives a good sense of the horrific conditions of the wounded and the war and the work the nurses did to aid the doctors on the WWI battlefront.

The descriptions of the maimed, the dying, and the dead for me was overwhelming, and I had a deep sense of sadness and discomfort reading about it throughout the book. I would have liked some contrast in the novel, some descriptions of nature, for instance, that would periodically lighten up the dreary atmosphere. In other words, the novel wasn't pleasant to read, even though the plotting was flawless.

Charles and Caroline Todd are a mother and son writing team who live on the east coast of the United States. Caroline has a BA in English Literature and History, and a Masters in International Relations. Charles has a BA in Communication Studies with an emphasis on Business Management, and a culinary arts degree that means he can boil more than water. 


For other reviews of An Unmarked Grave, visit the Blog Tour Schedule. The authors can be reached at  http://charlestodd.com/homepage/or on their Facebook page.

Thanks to TLC Book Tours and the authors/publisher for a complimentary review copy of  An Unmarked Grave.


Submitted to the War through the Generations: WWI Reading Challenge

Opening sentences: The Confession by Charles Todd

Opening sentences in a novel can set the tone and help readers decide about a book. Here are the opening sentences for The Confession, a detective mystery.

The Essex Marshes, Summer 1915

The body rolled in the current gently, as if still alive. It was facedown, only the back and hips visible. It had been floating that way for some time. men in the ancient skiff had watched it for a quarter of an hour, as if half expecting it to rise up and walk away before their eyes.

"He's dead, right enough," one said. "One of ours, do you think?"

"This far up the Hawking? It's a German spy,: the second man said, nodding, as if that explained everything. "Bound to be. I say, leave him to the fish."

"We won't know who he is until we pull him out, will we?" the third said and leaned out to touch the corpse with the boat hook.

"Here!" the first man cried out, as if this were sacrilege.
The body bobbed a little under the weight of the hook.

Title:  The Confession: An Inspector Ian Rutledge Mystery by Charles Todd
Published Jan. 3, 2012; William Morrow
Source: complimentary copy from the publisher

Goodreads description: In the latest of Charles Todd's "New York Times"-bestselling series, Scotland Yard inspector Ian Rutledge wrestles with a startling and dangerous case that reaches far into the past when a false confession from a man leads to a brutal murder.

Book Review: A Bitter Truth by Charles Todd

I smiled.  "You would have done the same for me, I think, if you had found me on your doorstep with nowhere to go."
She nearly laughed at that. "My doorstep?" she began, then broke off, shaking her head. "I live in the country," she added after a moment. "We seldom find strangers at our door." (ch. 1)

Title: A Bitter Truth: A Bess Crawford Mystery by Charles Todd
Publisher: William Morrow, August 30, 2011. Hardcover: 352 pages

Source: Publisher for review

Objective rating: 4.5/5

About: The time is 1917 and there is a war on. British nurse Bess Crawford has just returned home to England on Christmas leave from nursing wounded soldiers in France. When she arrives at her boarding house, she finds a well dressed but distraught woman huddling in the rain on the front steps and she invites her in, thus unwittingly beginning her involvement with the troubled Ellis family and their history of death and tragedy. Bess is caught up trying to help the distraught woman, Lydia, cope with the rest of her family and especially with her husband Roger. She travels with Lydia to the Ellis family home and has to play amateur sleuth after several murders occur on or near the Ellis family property.

Comments: A gripping historical mystery that is atmospheric and tense. The descriptions of the stark and dreary Shropshire countryside in the middle of winter sets the scene for the story of a family's disfunction and tragedy. The novel also does a good job of capturing the seriousness of a country in the midst of a terrible war, WWI. I was caught up in the plot and feeling the same dread and anxiety as the main characters. The protagonist, Bess, is portrayed as a feminine but strong individual, especially for a woman in her day, and she also makes a convincing amateur sleuth. I enjoy mysteries in general as well as historical mysteries and found this a very interesting read.

A Pale Horse by Charles Todd, a review

A Pale Horse

I found A Pale Horse by Charles Todd, a mystery set in the U.K., an interesting and well written book.

Setting: Nine cottages in Berkshire, England beneath a hill with a chalk horse etched out on its side, presumably by ancient Britons. One of the cottages has been empty for a while, once occupied by a man known as Partridge, who has "gone missing." No one has seen him recently, not his neighbor who feeds his cat in his absence, nor any of the other residents of the cottages.

Characters: Partridge worked for the British army during WWI, developing poison gases for the war effort. The British War Office has since been keeping tabs on him due to the sensitive nature of that work. When he disappears, Inspector Ian Rutledge is sent out from London by Scotland Yard to find him.

Mystery plot: Rutledge is also called on visit Yorkshire, a town where some young schoolboys have found a man lying dead in a deserted abbey, his face covered with a WWI gas mask. The schoolboys are convinced it's the work of the devil, and give no information to the authorities looking into the case. Rutledge clears the local schoolmaster of this crime after the local inspector falsely puts the blame on him. Rutledge begins to suspect the dead man is actually Partridge, the man the War Office wants to find.

Main plot: The mystery of Partidge's life and death and the effects on his family of his work on poison gases for warfare is the basis of the book's plot. There are several false leads and red herrings in the way of the truth, including the suspicious deaths of two of the other cottage residents in Berkshire, but with uncommon persistence, Rutledge is able to untangle the web to get to the heart of the mystery of Partridge, his life, the suicide of his wife, and the estrangement of his two daughters.

Historical relevance: The novel is set in the 1920s, just a few years after the end of the first world war. The theme follows early attempts to develop biological weapons.The seriousness of Inspector Rutledge job is offset somewhat by a subplot involving Rutledge's sister and her love affair, which, unlike Partridge's life, has a happy ending.

A goodbook for mystery lovers who are also history buffs. I would rate this police procedural/British mystery 4 stars.

Book provided by the publisher, for my objective review.