|
[ Home ]
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
The authors of series that they hope will run to double numbers have a problem - how to move their detectives along through time. The mother and son team who writes as Charles Todd have solved this problem neatly - essentially, time stands still for their protagonist, Ian Rutledge of the Yard. In this 15th in the series, it is just 1920, less than a year later than A TEST OF WILLS that started it all. And not much has changed. Rutledge is still suffering from what we would now call PTSD and then was termed, for lack of an acronym, shell-shock. He is still dependent for moral support upon his sister. He still loves his motor car. And he still has to deal with the voice of Hamish that continues to echo in his mind, Hamish, whose execution for refusing an order Rutledge had overseen and almost immediately whose dead body had protected Rutledge from an exploding shell. This time around, Rutledge is presented at the beginning with a puzzle - a dead man has been found in the road, an apparent victim of a hit and run accident. But he lacks all identification, his pockets having been turned out. All that is left to go on with is an unusual pocket watch, a family heirloom which leads Rutledge in the direction of a family living outside of London and involved in the wine trade in Madeira. So far, so good, but at this point, the exposition becomes more than a little murky. Other bodies turn up and identifying them is far from easy. The dedicated reader would be well advised at this point to write down the names of all the possibilities. Sadly, for the most part they remain only names and thus are very hard to distinguish, let alone care about. Rutledge is free of his former boss who is recuperating from a heart attack, but the replacement is not much better, curiously anxious to close the case and hang a suspect on extraordinarily thin evidence. Rutledge is not so sure and pursues his own line of enquiry. He is convinced that the key to the solution lies in motives buried some twenty or thirty years in the past. By the time it's all over, I am not altogether certain that all the loose ends have been tied up nicely. It seems to me that at least one missing character remains unaccounted for, but after reading the final chapter twice, I decided I didn't really care enough to pursue the matter any further. The solution to the crime struck me as altogether preposterous, but not in that delightful way that Golden Age puzzle mysteries managed their sleight of hand. It takes a certain fundamental lack of seriousness to pull one of those tricks off and whatever else may be said of this series, a lack of gravity is not one of them. The early books in this series provided a very strong sense of the enormous change that the Great War brought about in the lives of those who survived it. But in number fifteen, at least, this concern has faded. True, Rutledge is still haunted by Hamish, though the dour Scotsman plays a much reduced role and is frequently less than helpful. Thunderstorms still bring on panic attacks, though sometimes they don't. Since only about a year and a half has elapsed since the Armistice, it's hardly surprising that Rutledge is still a bit twitchy. But then why develop an elaborate plot that depends on our believing in a thirty-year-old grudge? Apparently, though everything has changed, some things haven't. Readers curious about this series should not begin with PROOF OF GUILT. It will only make them wonder why it has lasted so long. Go back and read some of the early entries. This one will only puzzle even the most willing of readers. § Yvonne Klein is a writer, translator, and retired college English professor who lives in Montreal.
Reviewed by Yvonne Klein, January 2013
[ Top ]
QUICK SEARCH:
Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
[ Home ]
| 
