Charles Todd

• Born: Unknown
• Place of Birth: Unknown

TYPE OF PLOT: Historical

PRINCIPAL SERIES: Inspector Ian Rutledge, 1996-2022; Bess Crawford, 2009-2023

Contribution

Even though they are Americans, like Elizabeth George and Martha Grimes, the authors who used the pen name Charles Todd to write mysteries set in Great Britain with British police officers and characters. Carolyn and David Watjen are the mother-and-son team, who wrote as Todd, until her death in 2021. David has continued to publish under the name Charles Todd in the mid-2020s. The duo established their credentials beginning with A Test of Wills (1996), which follows the series’ central character as he restarts his career as an inspector at Scotland Yard. Severely shell-shocked during his tour of duty in France during World War I, Inspector Rutledge suffers from hearing the voice of Hamish MacLeod, a Scottish corporal under his command whom Rutledge had executed for refusing to obey an order, an order Rutledge knew was going to be suicidal to his men. Todd’s skill in incorporating MacLeod’s monologues into the fabric of Rutledge’s suffering and the details of the plots gives this series a psychological dimension often missing in series crime fiction.

The setting—Great Britain in the immediate aftermath of the war—allows Todd to explore the historical period and the changes brought about by the upheaval of the war and its impact on returning soldiers and the civilian population. The accuracy of the series’ historical detail, the nuances of the characters’ speech, and their emotional depth make the novels remarkable, especially given that two American authors wrote them.

Biography

Charles Todd is the pseudonym of a mother-and-son mystery writing team (Caroline Todd and Charles Todd) who so closely guarded their privacy that, for most of their career, they did not reveal their actual names or residences except that they live on the East Coast. Even their joint authorship was not acknowledged until 2000, around the publication of their fourth novel, Legacy of the Dead. In the mid-2020s, readers know Caroline and Charles Todd are Carolyn and David Watjen. 

The genesis for the series came from their travels throughout England and to the battlefields of France. The character Ian Rutledge came about simply because they wanted to create a character they would like to read about. Rutledge is a little like two other characters who also experienced lingering postwar trauma, Dorothy L. Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey and Agatha Christie’s Captain Hastings. The immediate postwar setting provided an opportunity to examine the past and to make the past and present overlap, reflecting the authors’ interest in history. Besides, they said they had an uncle/great uncle who flew in World War I, and he aroused an interest in the period. The academic training of the authors who write as Todd also helped to shape the novels. The mother was an undergraduate English and history major with a graduate degree in international relations, and the son studied communications and culinary arts and history, especially the American Civil War and both world wars.

The publication of the first Todd novel came about quite by accident. The mother-and-son team sent a copy of A Test of Wills to St. Martin’s. The publisher accepted the manuscript, and the book did well enough for it to solicit another. The team continued producing novels in the Ian Rutledge series and wrote two other nonseries novels. The son has continued to write under the name Charles Todd even after his mother’s death in 2021. By the mid-2020s, twenty-five novels in the Ian Rutledge series had been published, with three—A Divided Loyalty (2020), A Fatal Lie (2021), and A Game of Fear (2022)—published in the 2020s. The team is also responsible for another series, the Bess Crawford series, which has seen fourteen novels published, the most recent, The Cliff’s Edge in 2023. 

The mother-and-son team’s books have garnered an impressive list of awards and nominations. For example, their first Ian Rutledge novel was nominated for a John Creasey Award, an Edgar, an Anthony, and an Independent Mystery Booksellers Association Dilys Award, and it won the Barry Award from Deadly Pleasures magazine. Subsequent novels in the series have also garnered nominations and awards.

Analysis

Ian Rutledge is a university-trained police officer who volunteered for service at the beginning of World War I, referred to as the Great War in Britain. Somewhat miraculously, he survives the horrors of the Western Front, although he loses his idealism and will to live. During the Somme Offensive in 1916, he was given a routine assignment to destroy a machine gun emplacement, and his corporal, Scot Hamish MacLeod, refused to lead his men over the top to attack the Germans. A good and loyal soldier until then, MacLeod explains that he can no longer willingly order his men to certain death. Because he refused an order in combat, MacLeod is sentenced to immediate execution by Rutledge, and at dawn the next day, a firing squad carries out the order. Rutledge dispatches the coup de grâce. Seconds later, he and his men are hit by an artillery shell, burying him alive. When he is dug out, he is suffering from shell shock and is sent home. His sister, Frances, removes him from a military hospital to a private clinic, where Rutledge begins his long road to recovery through the understanding care of a clinic doctor.

After Rutledge’s discharge, he returns to Scotland Yard, the only occupation he thinks he is good at. There, under the ever-watchful eye of Chief Superintendent Bowles, who both hates him and fears him because of his university education and war service, Rutledge is given a series of risky, potentially career-stalling assignments aiding various murder investigations outside London to induce him to crack under the strain or to embarrass him into resigning because of his incompetence. Bowles’s machinations play on Rutledge’s insecurities about regaining the prewar detective skills he fears he may have lost because of his precarious mental condition. His recurring memories of the war and its horrors are often triggered by inconsequential daily events or smells or sounds, and more frighteningly by the sound of Hamish MacLeod’s voice, which can echo in his mind at any time, frequently at very awkward moments. The voice of MacLeod sometimes serves as a moral guide or cautionary reminder and acts as a foil for Rutledge’s intuition.

The mother-and-son team, Charles Todd, set each of the first ten Rutledge novels in a different part of Great Britain, always outside London, usually in a village or small town or some rather remote rural location. Although Todd moves the settings of the novels around in this way, the locales do tend to be rather the same. Hamlets with close-knit inhabitants, often related by blood or marriage; ancient feuds that bring past slights or injuries into the present; and locals who distrust the outsider, the “man from London,” who has been sent to interfere in their lives. The distrust of outsiders is usually personified by the local chief constable, who feels Rutledge’s presence to be an intrusion into his turf. Also in each of the novels, no matter where it is set, the presence of the war is pervasive in the wounded service members, the suffering and loss of those whose loved ones did not return, and the lingering memories of wartime privations and the scourge of the plaguelike influenza pandemic that followed the war.

The novels in this series are paradigmatic English (and Scottish) village mysteries, all held together by the troubled and likable Scotland Yard Inspector Ian Rutledge, who, despite his war-induced injuries, struggles to bring order amid murder and to discover the truth of not only the crimes he undertakes to solve but also of the human condition.

A Test of Wills

The Rutledge novels are set a month apart, beginning in June 1919, when Rutledge returns to Scotland Yard in A Test of Wills. Still recovering from months of hospitalization and rejection by his fiancé, Jean, who could not cope with his shattered mind, Rutledge is sent to Upper Streetham in Warwickshire to investigate the shooting death of Colonial Harris, a veteran of the Boer and the Great War, who apparently had no enemies in the world. His struggle to keep his madness and claustrophobia under control contend with his gradually strengthening sense of professional competence.

Wings of Fire

In Wings of Fire (1998), Rutledge has not only survived his initial test but also managed to solve a tricky mystery, so in July, Bowles sends Rutledge off to Cornwall to examine the death of three members of a distinguished local family, one of whom was a prominent English poet and wrote understandingly about the war under the pseudonym of O. A. Manning. Quoting her poems becomes a recurring motif in the later novels. By the second book in the series, Todd had established the format of the novels to come. Rutledge arrives as a stranger in a tight-knit community and makes himself unpopular by interrogating everyone, tacking from interview to interview, and casting suspicion widely, only to wrap up the mystery at the very end of the case and book, often arresting someone only tangentially suspected throughout the book.

Search the Dark

In late August, Rutledge is dispatched to Dorset, Thomas Hardy country, in Search the Dark (1999), where he conducts an investigation that involves the family of a famous local politician. Putting Rutledge in socially or politically tricky situations is one of Bowles’s stratagems for getting him off the force and freeing himself from the danger of being shown up as a pettifogging bureaucrat. Bowles consistently believes that he is throwing Rutledge to the wolves, only to discover that Rutledge is smarter than he is and has more contacts in high places. This novel begins with a murder case and some missing children, but the initial cause for Rutledge’s arrival turns out to be of secondary interest to a broader investigation into a long-buried mystery.

Legacy of the Dead

Legacy of the Dead (2000) might well serve as the title for this entire series as each of the novels resurrects not only Rutledge’s dead, MacLeod, and the other soldiers who perished in the trenches but also secrets from the past, most of them believed to be dead and buried. In September, Rutledge travels to Scotland in search of Lady Maud Gray’s rebellious missing daughter. As he crisscrosses the country, he reopens old scars, especially when MacLeod’s fiancé, Fiona MacDonald, who has named her child after Rutledge, becomes one of the suspects in the murder of the missing woman. Rutledge’s past is revealed through his godfather, David Trevor, whose son was lost in the war. Although the murder investigation is centered in the small town of Duncarrick, Rutledge ranges across Scotland from Edinburgh in the east to Glasgow and Glencoe in the west. Like the other novels, the mystery contains bits of history, this time about Hadrian’s Wall and the Battle of Glencoe. At the novel’s conclusion, Rutledge is shot and badly wounded.

Watchers of Time

By October, in The Watchers of Time (2001), Rutledge is still recovering from his wounds but feels confined by his sister’s ministrations. “Auld Bowels,” as MacLeod calls Bowles, will not let the detective rest. He sees an opportunity to destroy Rutledge in his weakened condition, so he sends him to East Anglia, where Rutledge begins to search for the murderer of the local priest in an ancient seacoast town. In all the Ian Rutledge series novels, some characters mirror or reflect various of the central character’s neuroses. In this case, it is a woman who survived the sinking of the Titanic and experiences the same survival guilt as Rutledge. The usual characters abound: Aside from the clergy, both Catholic and Church of England, there is the local gentry, Lord Sedgwick, whose garden contains Egyptian baboon statues called the Watchers of Time, another apt title for the whole series.

A Fearsome Doubt

A Fearsome Doubt (2002) takes place in Kent in November. Rutledge is sent to look into the death of three former soldiers, all of whom are amputees. He has been reexamining one of his old cases because he suspects he may have gotten it wrong and sent an innocent man to his death. This case, of course, helps resurrect his own guilt about MacLeod and the other men whom he sent to their deaths. Throughout the series, MacLeod is constantly present in Rutledge’s consciousness and interrupts his thoughts to question his motives or remind him of his past. The reexamined case is another reminder of Rutledge’s remaining uncertainties. The novel also includes a bit of backstory about his wartime experiences, particularly in the immediate aftermath of his shell-shock disorientation when, for a brief time, he wandered behind German lines. Todd likes to work with multiple storylines, which help to keep the series fresh: the quaint village life and its folk—the vicar, local general practitioner, and the constable—are disrupted by the outsider and are further disrupted by intrusive secondary plots. With multiple plots, the cases can be broadened in more ways.

A Cold Treachery

Cold is the operative word in December in the Lake District in A Cold Treachery (2005), when Rutledge, along with the rest of the inhabitants of Urksdale village, becomes trapped by a winter snowstorm. Rutledge, there to investigate the murder of a family of five from which only a single boy escaped, becomes attracted to one of the possible suspects. Half a year and the gradual strengthening of Rutledge’s psyche have enabled him to rid himself of his sense of failure over his fiancé’s departure; allowing himself to become attracted is a significant development in his character. Each book has an attractive if often damaged, woman toward whom Rutledge could exhibit some interest, but he admits to being interested in this case. Also, by now, Rutledge is beginning to catch on to Superintendent Bowles’s tactics for getting him to self-destruct.

A Long Shadow

The supernatural appears in A Long Shadow (2006) as Rutledge escapes from a séance during a New Year’s Eve party to which he has accompanied his sister Frances. Séances, which claim to provide a means of contacting the dead, became fashionable right after the war when so many people were in mourning. became one of many who fell under the spell of the séance while searching for a way to contact his dead son. The idea of the haunted follows Rutledge to the small village of Dudlington in Northamptonshire, where the local constable has been shot with an arrow near Frith’s Wood, haunted from ancient times by the ghosts of the Saxons slaughtered there by invaders. Something else is happening as well, and Rutledge is being followed by someone who is planting engraved machine-gun shell casings in his rooms, and the stalking turns violent when someone starts shooting at Rutledge. His inspection of the crime by the woods turns into an ancillary case—the search for a girl missing for three years and feared dead in the spirit-infested woods.

A False Mirror

A False Mirror (2007) occurs in late February and early March 1920. While Rutledge and Scotland Yard are looking for the Green Park murderer in London, former civil servant Matthew Hamilton is nearly beaten to death on the beach near his home along the south coast near Devon. Then former lieutenant Stephen Mallory takes the injured man’s wife hostage in their house and requests that former fellow officer Rutledge be sent down to take over the investigation into the assault on Hamilton. The village of Hampton Regis then becomes the site for another of the murder investigations carried out by Rutledge, the outsider from London, still a fragile war victim haunted by MacLeod, a superior police officer and the bane of Superintendent Bowles’s existence.

Principal Series Characters:

• Inspector Ian Rutledge is a haunted, shell-shocked World War I veteran of the western front in France who has returned to his prewar position at Scotland Yard. His senior officer, Superintendent Bowles, keeps dispatching him to cases all over the British Isles.
• Superintendent Bowles is an insecure, risen-through-the-ranks police officer who resents the influx of university-trained new blood at Scotland Yard and takes credit for the accomplishments of his subordinates to advance his own career.
• Bess Crawford is a battlefield nurse serving during World War I and an amateur detective. She was raised in India, where her father was stationed. Her friends and family help her with her investigations, which mostly occur in London. She has a strong sense of duty and an unflinching moral code.

Bibliography

Brinson, Claudia Smith. “Through Murder Investigations, Shell-shocked Veteran Reflects on Aftermath of Death, Conflict in A False Mirror.” Review of A False Mirror, by Charles Todd. Knight Ridder Tribune News Service, 7 Feb. 2007, p. 1.

Cogdill, Oline H. “Haunted Hero in a Bygone Era.” Review of Legacy of the Dead, by Charles Todd. South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 5 Nov. 2000, p. 13F.

Kinsella, Bridget. “A Mystery Behind a Mystery Is Revealed.” Publishers Weekly, vol. 247, no. 37, 11 Sept. 2000, pp. 24-25.

Risen, Clay. “Caroline Todd, Half of a Mystery-Writing Duo, Dies at 86 (Published 2021).” The New York Times, 19 Nov. 2021, www.nytimes.com/2021/11/19/books/caroline-todd-dead.html. Accessed 1 Aug. 2024.

Todd, Charles. “Past Mysteries.” The Armchair Detective, vol. 30, no. 2 spring 1997, pp. 176-184.

“Who is Charles Todd.” Charles Todd, charlestodd.com/the-authors. Accessed 1 Aug. 2024.

Winks, Robin W. “The Historical Mystery.” In Mystery and Suspense Writers: The Literature of Crime, Detection, and Espionage, edited by Robin W. Winks and Maureen Corrigan. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1998.