Staff Recommendations - A Test of Wills

A Test of Wills

by Charles Todd

This is a classic British police procedural with several twists. The setting is Upper Streetham, a small village in Warwickshire, England. The time is 1919, the world still reeling from the Great War. The detective is Scotland Yard Inspector Ian Rutledge, recently returned to police duty from the bloody battlefields of World War I. The victim is Colonel Harris, a career soldier, also recently returned from the war to his estate outside Upper Streetham, where he lived with his ward, Lettice Wood. Miss Wood is recently engaged to Captain Wilton, a young soldier back from the war, also. As you might suspect, World War I and its aftermath feature prominently in this mystery. A woman in the village continues to be shunned because she fell in love with a German prisoner of war detained in the Upper Streetham during the war. Hickam, the town drunk, who suffers from shell shock, was the last person to see Colonel Harris alive. And our Inspector Rutledge, also suffering from shell shock, is dealing with his first murder case since his return to police duty, and his own very personal nightmares. As a captain in the army, Rutledge was forced to order the execution of a young soldier for refusing Rutledge's command to fight. This young soldier, Hamish MacLeod, haunts Rutledge, speaking to him in a voice that only Rutledge can hear. The central question of this mystery is who would want to kill Colonel Harris, a well-liked man for the short amount of time he actually spent in Upper Streetham in between his numerous military postings? Why has the romance between Lettice Woods and Captain Wilton suddenly cooled? Will Inspector Rutledge be able to find the killer or will he succumb to the inner torment and chaos always hovering at the edge of his next thought? With the voice of the dead, young soldier constantly questioning his judgment and character, the hunt for the killer of Colonel Harris will truly become "a test of wills." -- recommended by Evelyn D. -- Bennett Martin Public Library/Technical Processes

[Also available in unabridged book-on-cd format.][ A Test of Wills page on the official Charles Todd web site ]

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