A Pale Horse: A Novel of Suspense (Inspector Ian Rutledge Mysteries, 10)

I started reading this series in order and this is the weakest of them so far. Rutledge never really solves the mystery (the killer self identifies by breaking and running) and parts of the plot don't really make sense. It started strong but the original characters (a school teacher and his wife and a nasty policeman) just fade away. The story then ambles along and ends abruptly. Not up to par.

As I've said in reviews of previous installments in this series, the writing is good quality, and refreshingly short on the hallmarks of a lot of contemporary fiction (sex, violence, foul language.) The writing is what keeps me coming back for more!

But there are disturbing lapses in this installment, whose plot cleaves into two sub-stories, one of which is very engaging and satisfyingly resolved, whereas the other is peopled with too many mostly ill-defined characters and drags on to an out-of-left-field conclusion.

Did one member of the duo write one sub-story, and the other the second?

I do begin to wonder whether the mother/son writing team has an editor who's fully involved and not afraid to demand that they address obvious shortcomings in early drafts.

For example, eventually there's a character named "Miller" in the endlessly dragging sub-story. When I first became aware of him, I said, "Miller? Who the heck is Miller?" After finishing the book, I searched the on-line sample provided by Amazon for occurrences of "Miller", hoping to quickly find the place where he'd been introduced, which I'd obviously read but forgotten by the time he came to the fore in the plot. No such luck! All occurrences found by Amazon are merely passing by-name references to someone who lives in "the cottages". No backstory could be located!

A smaller example of sloppy editing: Inspector Ian Rutledge's nemesis at Scotland Yard is Chief Superintendent Bowles, whom underlings call "Old Bowels" behind his back. Pretty funny. But in this book, during a brief visit to home base, Rutledge is told by a colleague that "Old Bowles [sic] is in a foul mood". Come on! Details matter.

There are also apparently pointless brief appearances of characters from earlier installments, which lead nowhere, and a tiny sub-sub-plot involving Rutledge's sister, whose conclusion, such as it is, leaves one wondering why the heck the Todds thought it needed to be included in this story. When the editor asked them, as surely any editor would do, what was the answer?

Enough quibbling. I look forward to the next installment in the Ian Rutledge series!

Charle's Todd's Inspector Ian Rutledge carries a heavy burden: on one shoulder he carries the guilt that he feels for the death of the soldiers under him during World War I; on the other shoulder, he carries the burden of continuing to face death and its aftermath as a detective with Scotland Yard.

In this latest novel, it is 1920 and Rutledge is sent to Berkshire, in the shadow of its 'Pale Horse' created in the side of a mount, to find a man for the military. The object of his watch has disappeared and it soon looks like he is the mysterious body found in the ruins of an abby, clothed in a monk's robe and wearing a gas mask. And Rutledge must cut away the shadows of the past, of secrets and emotions to get to the truth. Who is the man in the mask and who killed him is only part of what he discovers.

This seems almost like two novel plots mashed together to try to form one, and not always successfully. There is a lot of back-and-forth travel between Berkshire and Yorkshire in pursuit of a missing man, and the identity of a body found in very strange circumstances. The story begins with a man walking at night, reliving his war memories. Do we ever discover which of the inhabitants of the small circle of cottages this man is? He clearly is not the later missing man who didn't serve in the trenches. Why do we have this brief story of him out walking, and thinking about the war? I was never sure.

I do like the episode of the young boys who first see the dead body, and how Rutledge finally gets the story out of them. The subplot involving Inspector Madsen in Yorkshire ends unsatisfactorily. The characters of a schoolmaster and his wife are quite well developed, and we slowly learn why Madsen feels determined to lay the blame at the schoolmaster's feed. When we last see him about halfway through the book, he has been taken into custody by Madsen, all eveidence to the contrary.

Then suddenly the scene shifts back to Berkshire and a whole new cast of characters take up Rutledge's attention. The schoolmaster is forgotten. He and his wife are never mentioned again. One assumes he is eventually released by the police, but after all the pages spent developing that plot line it is just abandoned and never referred to again.Eventually a solution is found among the new characters introduced, but by then I hardly cared. I feel the plot is really 2-star, but I give it 3 as I do still love the character of Rutledge, and of Hamish, and the whole ambiance of post-WWI Britain. I enjoy the asides about Rutledge's sister Frances. So I enjoyed all that, but the plot itself left a lot to be desired.

The seller was excellent, fast, true to his/her word, and books were in excellent condition.
The author is one of the very best of any I have read--and I read excessively. More than a bookworm. Portrays the characters, the time period and makes you feel part of the story, I am on the last BOOK IN THE SERIES AND LOVED THEM ALL. Fantastic grasp of this historical period.

After having read many other books written by the "Charles Todd" team of writers it might be possible for me to become tired of the characters portrayed. Luckily, that has not happened. This particular book in the series does have some small problems, but for the most part I am so interested in the life of the main character, Scotland Yard Inspector Ian Rutledge, that I find I am willing to overlook those problems in favor of the enjoyment I receive from the story as a whole. The novel takes place in 1920, only several years after the fighting stopped in World War I. Rutledge has, as his constant reminder of that war, the voice in his mind of a soldier whom he ordered to be executed for refusing to obey a direct order under combat conditions. It remains a balancing act for Rutledge to function without allowing anyone to realize how much influence the voice of Hamish has over him.

Rutledge is sent on a watching brief for the Army because someone they are keeping an eye on has disappeared. Rutledge has nothing to go on because the Army isn't talking and Chief Superintendent Bowles doesn't want any feathers ruffled. Rutledge drives to the tiny village in Berkshire which sits practically beneath the chalk horse carved into the hillside, not far from Uffington. It is clearly impossible for him to remain unobserved by the other eight residents of the enclave of cottages. All of these people have chosen to isolate themselves, even from the villagers, because of hidden secrets in their lives. After several days Rutledge returns to London, only to be sent immediately to a village in Yorkshire where an unidentified man has been found, presumably the victim of a murder.

Some of the problems I had with this particular book were because all eight of the tenants of the cottages played such a large part in the mystery. That turned out to be quite a few people to keep track of. And the crime in Yorkshire also had many characters attached to it and they also added to some of the confusion. I have to say that I still don't fully understand why the character living in the cottage beneath the pale horse was committing the crimes there. Evidently I haven't fully grasped the explanation and will need to go back and read that part over again. As for the happenings in the Yorkshire area, I enjoyed that much more. That situation involved another member of the police force acting in a self-serving manner and being unwilling to accept the help and advice Rutledge was giving him. These books always surprise me with how often suspects, or even just witnesses to a crime, will simply tell the police they choose not to talk to them and slam the door. Can you really do that?

Once again I enjoyed the atmosphere created for this story. This particular location has probably the most famous of all the chalk horses in England and I liked how it's history was woven into the thinking and actions of the characters. Rutledge and Hamish had a very good "conversation" regarding what had happened in France during the war with Rutledge asking Hamish exactly the same question I have often wanted answered. Always realizing, of course, that Hamish is a ghostly voice in Rutledge's mind, but in these stories he does become a bona fide character. I still have several of the stories to read and this 10th novel in the series is written in such a was as to be a completely stand alone novel. I am mightily enamored of the writing style and characters of these novels. I sincerely hope you will come away feeling the same.

My hero, Ian Ruthledge, always gets his man or woman, as the case may be. Even with the devil on his shoulder, his sisters loneliness and no true love..,he comes thru again by being patient and persistent, not cutting any corners and following all leads. PLUS he has to survive and do his job with a boss who doesn't much care for him. They didn't have working in hostile environments back then...one just lived with it!

I debated as to whether or not this was four or five stars. The use of "Hamish" a ghostly Scottish voice from Rutledge's World War I battles gives a haunting quality to the whole book. It forces the reader to recognize that although Rutledge is with Scotland Yard, his nightmares from the War are always with him. I found the plot bogged down from time to time and got a little confusing as a result. I still recommend it because of the skillful way the narrative between Rutledge and Hamish weaves the past with the present. This was one of those books that kept me guessing until the end. It's worth a read, for sure.

Charles Todd, as another reviewer pointed out, is a mother/son writing team that have been writing stories set in England during WWI (for the most part). Certainly, this book is part of that set of books about an Inspector Rutledge from Scotland Yard. This story is somewhat of a convoluted one in which Rutledge is assigned to observe and find out what happened to a man (who worked at one time for the government during WWI)as a chemist. The military is involved, the man's family is involved, others within the rather insular community in Berkshire are involved. There is a lot of detail about how Rutledge thinks, how he finally tracks down the people involved in the course of several murders. There is also some insights to Rutledge, his personal relationships, and especially the effects that the war had on him personally. This is the second of the Inspector Ian Rutledge novels that I have read and while I find there is a lot of reading in them, and at times they may be a bit slow paced, I find the plot and the journey to the conclusion well worth the read.

A classic, traditional Golden Age suspense novel from a veteran pair of savvy crime writers. The mother/son writing team persist in producing historical crime novels of excellence, taste and balance. That the stories are thoughtfully constructed with many seemingly disparate parts coming together in nicely meshed, logical progressions is a distinct advantage for the reader.

The tall incisively intelligent Scotland Yard Inspector, Ian Rutledge, is back again in another puzzler. This time his investigation is beset by recalcitrant relatives, mysterious unidentified bodies, a missing scientist and a dangerous War Office adversary.

Rutledge, as fans of the series (this being the eleventh) know, like so many Britons in 1920 when this novel is set, is still mightily affected by the experiences in the Great War, that vicious, appallingly wasteful conflict most Americans now know as World War I. Rutledge served in France during the height of trench warfare and saw many of his men butchered. He returns to England wounded in mind and sometimes only tenuously hanging on to rationality. Scotland Yard with its routines and attitudes seems to function as a safety net, even when the intelligent Rutledge follows his instinct more than stated police procedures. His other crutch is the voice he carries with him, that of one of his dead men from the war. As a clever alter-ego, Hamish allows Rutledge, through the authors, affine creative sensibility, an ability to look with different eyes at the circumstances that confront the detective. From time to time this helps Rutledge to step back from the black hole of madness.

In this novel, the War Office seems to have misplaced one of its important scientists involved in a top secret project. Rutledge is sent into the western provinces to find the missing man and report back. The question soon becomes, is the scientist missing or is he dead as well? Rutledge's development of the answers is a complicated, tortuous journey through murder, and disturbing relationships. A fine, multi-layered novel comes highly recommended.