A false mirror

Review by New York Times Review

DON'T ask me how it happened, but a gang of great old guys nearly hijacked the American crime novel last year. I'm thinking of lone avengers like Michael Connelly's aging homicide detective, Harry Bosch, bringing belated justice to a cold case he might have botched in "Echo Park," as well as precinct-house saints like the Oracle, wising up the rookie cops in Joseph Wambaugh's "Hollywood Station." And how about those old lions who came roaring out of retirement in new novels by George Pelecanos and John Lutz? But no matter how vital its old guard, the crime novel always needs fresh blood, so it's gratifying to find a few promising writers tooling up to give the genre its next generation of heroes. These raw recruits may be younger and dumber, but they're no less driven. And if Theresa Schwegel's PROBABLE CAUSE (St. Martin's Minotaur, $23.95) is anything to go by, they're also more self-absorbed and anxious, more alienated from a criminal justice system that demands their loyalty but betrays their trust. In her first novel, "Officer Down," Schwegel got inside the head of a female cop who earns her independence the hard way when she's suspected of killing her partner. "Probable Cause" returns to this dark theme with its coming-of-age story about a third-generation Chicago police officer, 23-year-old Ray Weiss, who is ostracized by his fellow officers when he balks at participating in their shady deals with local merchants. Against his better judgment, Ray goes along with a rookie initiation rite that has him pocketing some rings from a phony jewelry-store robbery. But when the shop owner is murdered and Ray's field training officer bullies him into making a false arrest, the kid rebels. Schwegel has no trouble winning sympathy for Ray, whose awed love for his emotionally distant father and idealistic faith in the honor of his job make him sweet as well as vulnerable. And while Schwegel skillfully tightens the plot screws that force Ray to develop his own code of ethics, she also has fun riding with the cops through the best and worst of Chicago's neighborhoods. But there are plenty of ouch! moments in her writing ("the air in the room is as still as a dead man"), and the older her characters, the stiffer their dialogue. While Ray's personal appeal is enough to get us over these narrative humps, it would be nice to see more of his hard-won maturity next time out. Marcus Sakey works the same Chicago territory in his flashy first novel, THE BLADE ITSELF (St. Martin's Minotaur, $22.95), but from the other side of the law. His protagonist, Danny Carter, is a reformed thief who considers himself blessed because he holds down a responsible managerial position with a contracting outfit and lives with a woman who loves him. But seven years ago, Danny ran out on Evan McGann, his boyhood friend and partner in crime, during a pawnshop robbery that turned ugly when Evan "exploded" and shot the owner. Now Evan is out of prison and demanding payback by blackmailing Danny into kidnapping his boss's 12-year-old son. The narrative drive of this white-knuckle story owes everything to the raw tension between virtuous Danny and evil Evan, whose violent rages make him "a force of nature." But once Danny caves in to Evan's threats, the plot follows a familiar pattern. It's obvious that Evan is going to roll over Danny's efforts to control events and that Danny's ultimate triumph will be a way of proving himself to his disapproving father. It's also a given that there will be a lot of talk about growing up poor and Irish in a blue-collar neighborhood "that belonged to them less every day." But even if we've already read this in a Dennis Lehane novel, Sakey pulls it off by virtue of his cool, commanding style. He's already found his voice. Now he needs to expand his vision. Four years after the 1916 Somme offensive, the battle still rages in Ian Rutledge's head. Haunted by his wartime experiences, the Scotland Yard detective returns in A FALSE MIRROR (Morrow/HarperCollins, $23.95), the ninth novel in a remarkable series by an American mother/son team who write under the name of Charles Todd. Like all Rutledge's cases, a brutal assault in the coastal town of Hampton Regis can be traced back to the war. The victim, Matthew Hamilton, served in the Foreign Office and his presumed assailant, Stephen Mallory, was engaged to Hamilton's wife before they were separated by the war in which he was branded as a deserter. With Mallory holding Mrs. Hamilton and her maid hostage, Rutledge works his way through the village, opening up old wounds and reliving his own painful memories. The sad and shocking resolution only confirms Todd's thesis that war destroys minds and souls as well as bodies, and that the suffering never ends - not even for the so-called winners. War is also very much on the mind of Martha Grimes, another American author who sets her mysteries in England. Before the plot takes some dizzying turns, DUST (Viking, $25.95) appears to be yet another enchanting entertainment for devotees of Grimes's Scotland Yard detective, Richard Jury, and his irrepressible friend, Melrose Plant. When Billy Maples, a young philanthropist from a moneyed family, is found murdered in a boutique hotel on the Clerkenwell Road, Jury wonders if it has anything to do with Maples's docent duties at Lamb House, the historic residence in Rye where Henry James wrote much of his later work. Dispatching Plant to Rye, where he develops hilarious literary affectations, Jury focuses his attention on Maples's grandfather, one of the code-breakers based at Bletchley Park during World War II. While the war stories are sensitively drawn, they are trivialized by the lighter comic tone of the storytelling. Henry James would not approve. Theresa Schwegel Schwegel's new novel is a coming-of-age story featuring a 23-year-old third-generation Chicago cop.

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 27, 2009]

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Review by Booklist Review

Motive, motive, motive. Is it jealousy? Money? Or something entirely different? Scotland Yard Inspector Rutledge must find the answer when he's summoned to the small town of Hampton Regis at the behest of Stephen Mallory, accused of viciously attacking one Matthew Hamilton. Afraid of being railroaded for a crime he insists he didn't commit, Mallory holds Hamilton's wife and her housekeeper hostage, hoping Rutledge can prove his innocence. It's tough going for Rutledge, who is dogged by unpleasant memories of Mallory, whom he knew while soldiering in the Great War, and by the echoing voice of Hamish, also a fellow soldier, whose imagined counsel steadies the investigator as\b he casts about for suspects. Todd, the pseudonym of a mother-son writing team, incorporates touches of both Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie in this character-driven mystery, which builds smoothly but not simply to a climax that is likely to be a genuine surprise. --Stephanie Zvirin Copyright 2006 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

The complex, evocative ninth installment in Todd's series set in post-WWI England (after 2006's Long Shadow) showcases the pseudonymous author's usual subtle understatement and deft characterization. Scotland Yard Inspector Ian Rutledge, who has returned from the trench warfare of France haunted by the carnage (and in particular by his order to execute one of his own men), heads to the seaside village of Hampton Regis to defuse a hostage situation. Stephen Mallory, who served under Rutledge's command in the war and is suspected of viciously assaulting his ex-lover's husband, demands Rutledge's presence before he will release his ex-lover and other hostages. To manage the crisis, Rutledge must weather the suspicions of the local police and identify the person responsible for the assault and two subsequent murders. Todd, a mother-and-son writing team, seamlessly melds a fair-play whodunit with psychological suspense in the tradition of P.D. James's best. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

Scotland Yard Inspector Ian Rutledge lands in a small town when a love triangle turns deadly in the ninth of the series. The mother-son team (Caroline and Charles Todd) live in Delaware and North Carolina.-Ann Kim (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

The heartbreaking aftermath of choosing either side in the fight-or-flight dilemma. Stephen Mallory, once a soldier under Ian Rutledge's command at the Somme, seeks out Rutledge, now with Scotland Yard, then pleads to assaulting Matthew Hamilton and holding the man's wife, Felicity, and maid, Nan, hostage at gunpoint. Rutledge subsequently heads to the English town of Hampton Regis with Hamish MacLeod, the wartime ghost he can't shake (A Long Shadow, 2006, etc.). The villagers believe Mallory wants Hamilton dead so he can reclaim Felicity, who didn't wait for Mallory to return from the war. This scenario, which reminds Rutledge of his own wartime abandonment, is fostered by his dislike of the cowardly Mallory. While Hamilton lies comatose, Rutledge wonders who else might have attacked Hamilton: a solicitor who fiddled with Hamilton's inheritance while he was stationed in Malta; a foreign service officer Hamilton may have pilloried in his diary; a long-unseen woman whose memory haunts him (but why?); and another woman who might want revenge for his striking her down in a car accident. None of them, however, seem to have any reason for the ensuing deaths of the doctor's wife and Hamilton's gossipy maid. Clues that would do Agatha Christie proud inexorably lead to the dnouement, but Todd's fans will know better than to expect a happy ending. Compelling evidence that inside every warrior who returns from the front, there's a nightmare waiting to break out. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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A False Mirror An Inspector Ian Rutledge Mystery Chapter One Hampton Regis Early February, 1920 It was a bitterly cold night of frost, the stars sharp and piercingly bright overhead. He pulled the motorcar to the verge and settled to watch the house that lay directly across the black expanse of water. It stood out against the sky, amazingly clear. Even from here he could tell there were lamps burning in three of the rooms. He could picture them in his mind: at the rear of the house--the sitting room, very likely. In the entry, where the pattern of the fanlight over the front door shone starkly against the deep shadows there--behind it the staircase, of course. And one on the first floor, under the eaves. Their bedroom, surely. The sitting room lamp went out after half an hour. He could see, for an instant, the grotesque silhouette cast for a moment or two against the drawn shades as someone reached out to turn down the flame. And then the silhouette reappeared briefly in the fanlight just as the second lamp was extinguished. He leaned forward, his concentration intense, then swore as the windscreen clouded with his breath. Were there two people in the bedroom now? He couldn't bear to think about it. He couldn't bear to picture her in another man's arms, wrapped in the warmth of the bedclothes, whispering softly, her hair falling over his shoulder and across his chest. . . . His fists pounded angrily on the steering wheel as he tried to force the images out of his mind. And then the last lamp went out, leaving the house in darkness. Shutting them in . While he sat there, like a fool, in the windless night, cold and wretched. It was the fourth time he'd driven into Hampton Regis. He had promised the doctor he'd do no such thing. But the temptation was too strong, overwhelming his better judgment. Haunted by the need to know, he had told himself that once would do no harm. But once had become twice. And now here he was again. Dr. Beatie had said, "Stephen--you aren't healed yet. Do you understand? Emotional distress could put you back here, in a worse state than before!" Both of them knew it was a lie. There could be no worse state than the one he'd somehow, miraculously, survived. He had had to kill the Captain before Dr. Beatie could set him free. He wished now it had been Matthew Hamilton who had died. He caught himself, knowing it was wrong to wish such a thing. But God, he was tired, and alone, and sometimes afraid. He wanted things the way they had been in 1914. Before the war--the trenches--the nightmares. Before Matthew Hamilton had walked into the clinic waiting room to comfort Felicity and told her--what? Lies? Or the sordid truth? That her fiancé was a coward. After a time Stephen got out to crank the motorcar, the sound of the powerful engine roaring into life and filling the cold silence. He would freeze to death if he sat here, uselessly mourning. Setting his teeth, he turned the motorcar and without looking again at the darkened house behind him, drove back the way he'd come. He couldn't see behind the silken white curtains that covered the window under the eaves a pale face staring out into the night, watching the puff of exhaust whip across the rear light, a wraith shielding its brightness until it was out of sight. Matthew Hamilton rose early, quietly throwing back the bedclothes and the counterpane that covered him, then tucking the ends around his wife's bare shoulder. Looking down at her, he marveled again at his luck. Then reminded himself that it wasn't his luck at all, but someone else's misfortune, that he had married this lovely, loving woman in his bed. Wryly turning away, he dressed quickly and then set about making up the fire so that the room would be warm for her. When it was drawing well, he went down to the kitchen and blew the fire there into life for the kettle. While he waited for it to boil, he raised the shades and looked out at the clear, cold morning. The sun was not yet up, but a pale rose had begun to streak the winter-brown lawns spreading to the cliff face overlooking the sea. The water beyond was still, waiting for the sun, and farther out there was a soft mist blanketing it. To the west, across the harbor below, the land rose up again, running out to a point a little higher than the one on which his house was set. The pair of headlands formed two arms embracing the Mole--the medieval stone pier that jutted out across the shingle to the tideline--creating a haven for shipping along England's south coast in an age when sailing ships made Hampton Regis rich. There had once been a watchtower on the far headland, built to keep an eye on Napoleon. Only ruins stood there now, overgrown at the base, a few feet of stone still reaching upward like pleading fingers. Two days ago he'd seen a vixen and her kits romping there, and he'd been touched by their exuberance, wondering how any man could hunt them down. Farmers were often a backward lot, though it was an unkind thing to say. But foxes kept vermin down, and like the old owl in the belfry at the church, deserved a better character than they'd been given. The kettle whistled behind him, startling him, and he moved quickly to lift it off the plate. He enjoyed these few minutes alone, before the maid arrived, before the house was a-bustle. He also enjoyed spoiling his wife, doing such small things for her pleasure. A far cry from his long years of exile in other countries, alone and often distrusted, the voice of London when often London had left him to his own devices. It was over, and he called himself happy. A False Mirror An Inspector Ian Rutledge Mystery . Copyright © by Charles Todd. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold. Excerpted from A False Mirror by Charles Todd All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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