A matter of justice

There's no end to war in Charles Todd's unnervingly beautiful historical novels, only the enduring legacy of suffering inherited by those who survive and remember. In A MATTER OF JUSTICE (Morrow, $24.99), Inspector Ian Rutledge of Scotland Yard, a shell-shocked veteran haunted by his battlefield experiences in France, once again serves as witness to the unsettling social changes sweeping across England in the aftermath of World War I. When he arrives in the quiet village of Cambury to investigate the bizarre murder of Harold Quarles, a financial adviser who regarded himself as squire of all he surveyed, Rutledge is confronted by resistance from the local constabulary and a wall of silence from almost everyone else. But the detective's own survivor guilt ("Finding a way back had somehow seemed to be a final betrayal of the dead") has also made him acutely sensitive to the psychic wounds of others. While Quarles may have been universally loathed, the inspector knows it would take someone with an extraordinary grievance to bash the villain's head in and string him up from the rafters of his medieval tithe barn. Is this a simple act of vengeance or some disgruntled moralist's twisted notion of justice? Here the mother and son who write under the name Charles Todd get it all right: a shocking crime in a bucolic setting; secretive characters who act from complex motives; a confounding puzzle elegantly presented and put before a detective with an intuitive understanding of the dark side of human nature. Taken on its own terms, Cambury seems a self-contained community awkwardly adjusting to modern ways. (Todd captures this transitional era with one wonderful metaphor: when a motorcar runs off the road, a team of horses arrives to pull it back.) But under the village's placid exterior, seething resentment is felt for those who presume to scale class barriers and challenge old ways. A parvenu like Quarles, who overcame his humble beginnings as a coal miner's son to marry above himself and become the cruel lord of the manor, poses a threat to traditional country values. Even with an inheritance to soften the dismissal, one character chooses to kill herself when she's no longer required in the big house. Having lost husbands, fathers, sons and brothers to the war, some villagers would rather die - or kill - than give up what's left of their world. Patricia Cornwell's new novel, SCARPETTA (Putnam, $27.95), gets off to a great start, with the indomitable Kay Scarpetta, medical examiner extraordinaire, up to her ears in cadavers. ("Stryker saws whined, running water drummed, and bone dust sifted through the air like flour.") And the case that calls her to New York on New Year's Day is a doozy - the "Midget Murder," as the tabloids heartlessly put it, of a female dwarf, possibly by the boyfriend who's cowering in Bellevue Hospital, convinced sinister forces are trying to steal his mind. When it comes to the forensic sciences, nobody can touch Cornwell, who analyzes cyberspace crime as effortlessly as she walks us through cutting-edge lab technology and elucidates clinical obsession. Trouble is, Scarpetta no longer travels without her posse - her husband, who's a forensic psychologist; her niece, who's a computer genius; as well as Pete Marino, a former cop who's in deep disgrace after his vile behavior in "Book of the Dead" - and it takes the first 100 pages of this overlong narrative just to explain (none too convincingly) how they all happen to be in New York at the same time, working on the same case. Malcolm Shuman's series novels are written in a pedestrian style that isn't evident in THE LEVEE (Academy Chicago, paper, $16.95), a delicately constructed, teasingly told stand-alone mystery set in Baton Rouge and based on an actual unsolved crime. The stabbing death of a teacher is recounted here in two time frames by the same narrator, Colin Douglas, an author of true-crime stories who was 15 years old when the murder took place - and is a haunted older man when he returns to his hometown to confront his own role in the crime. "I always figured you'd come here and write about what happened," says a friend, one of a group of boys who stumbled on the murder in the graveyard of a ruined plantation when they were camping on the levee. But even as Douglas reflects on the racial and class prejudices that affected the outcome of the case, he and the reader are aware this is one sad story that will never see daylight. Anticipating Sir Arthur Conan Doyle by more than 20 years, an American physician named John Babbington Williams was scribbling stories extolling the fictional exploits of James Brampton, a New York detective with uncanny gifts of observation and ratiocination. The collected stories were published in 1865 as LEAVES FROM THE NOTE-BOOK OF A NEW YORK DETECTIVE (Westholme, papar, $14.95) and promptly lost a bundle for the publisher. Make no mistake: Dr. Williams hardly rivals Conan Doyle's intellectual brilliance, nor can he match Poe's felicitous style or Wilkie Collins's storytelling. But what a treat it is to make the acquaintance of a man who was probably the earliest American sleuth, a quick and cunning fellow who can outwit a gang of counterfeiters or see guilt in the most guileless face - and reads French besides. "Perhaps I have done more towards detecting crime than any other living man," he allows, with no false modesty. Charles and Caroline Todd's detective, Ian Rutledge, is a shell-shocked veteran of World War I.

When financier Harold Quarles is found dead in a church, Scotland Yard inspector Ian Rutledge discovers that everyone in the small 1920s English village had a motive to kill him. As he attempts to sort out all the suspects, Rutledge gradually learns that the victim was not what he seemed and that there are war crimes more horrible than the ones haunting his own head. Like Todd's (charlestodd.com) previous ten Inspector Rutledge mysteries-the most recent being A Pale Horse, also available on audio from Sound Library-this is a golden-age mystery with an added psychological kick. As always, prolific and deservedly popular British narrator Simon Prebble delivers a distinctive, polished, and unobtrusive performance. Highly recommended for all popular collections. [Audio clip available through www.bbcaudiobooksamerica.com; the Morrow hc was recommended "for all public libraries," LJ 12/08.-Ed.]-I. Pour-El, Des Moines Area Technical Coll., Boone, IA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

A Matter of Justice Chapter One The Scilly Isles May 1920 Ronald Evering was in his study, watching a mechanical toy bank go through its motions, when the idea first came to him. The bank had been a gift from a friend who knew he collected such things. It had been sent over from America, and with it in a small pouch were American pennies with which to feed the new acquisition, because they fit the coin slot better than the English penny. A painted cast-iron figure of a fat man sat in a chair, his belly spreading his brown coat so that his yellow waistcoat showed, and one hand was stretched out to receive his bribe from political figures and ordinary citizens seeking his favor. His name was "Boss" Tweed, and he had controlled political patronage in New York City in the aftermath of the American Civil War. Through an alliance between Tammany Hall and the Democratic Party, graft had been his stock-in-trade. Now his image was encouraging children to be thrifty. A penny saved . . . The note accompanying the gift had ended, "Look on this as a swindler of sorts for the swindled, my dear Ronald, and take your revenge by filling his belly full of pennies, in time to recoup your pounds. . . ." He hadn't particularly cared for the tone of the note, and had burned it. Still, the bank was a clever addition to his collection. It had been a mistake to confide in anyone, and the only reason he'd done it was to vent his rage at his own impotence. Even then he hadn't told his friend the whole truth: that he'd invested those pounds in order to look murderers in the face, to see, if such a thing existed, what it was that made a man a killer. In the end all he'd achieved was to make himself known to two -people who had no qualms about deliberately cheating him. The explanation was simpleâ€"they wanted no part of him, and losing his money was the simplest way to get rid of him without any fuss. He hadn't foreseen it, and it had become a personal affront. He had sensed the subtle change in the air when he'd first given his name, and cursed himself for not using his mother's maiden name instead. But the damage was done, and he'd been afraid to let them see what he suspected. Yet it had shown himâ€"even though he couldn't prove itâ€"that he'd been right about them. What he didn't know was what to do with that knowledge. Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord . . . But the Lord had been remarkably slow exacting it. If anything, these two men had prospered. And he had had no experience of vengeance. There was only his mother, crying in his father's arms, this quiet, unassuming woman fiercely demanding that whoever had killed her dear boy be punished. A ten-year-old, listening from the shadows of the stairs, shocked and heartbroken, had endured nightmares about that moment for years afterward. And it was his mother's prodding after his father's death that had sent him to Cape Town in 1911, to bring her dear boy home from his South African grave. "Your father couldn't do it. But you must," she'd urged him time and again. "It's your duty to Timothy, to me, to the family. Bring him home, let him lie beside your father in the churchyard, where he belongs. Find a way, if you love me, and let me see him resting there before I die!" Trying to shake off the memory, Evering took another penny from the pouch and placed it in Boss Tweed's outstretched hand. Almost quicker than the eye could follow, the hand slid the penny into the waistcoat pocket as Boss Tweed's head moved to nod his thanks. The man smiled. It was no wonder he preferred these toys to -people. He had come home from Cape Town with his brother's body, after two years of forms and long hours in hot, dusty offices in search of the proper signatures. What he hadn't bargained for was the information he'd collected along the way. Information he had never told his mother, but which had been a burden on his soul ever since. Almost ten years now. Because, like Hamlet, he couldn't make up his mind what to do about what he knew. Well, to be fair, not ten years of single-minded effort. The Great War had begun the year after his return from South Africa, while he was still trying to discover what had become of those two men after they left the army. It wasn't his fault that he'd been stationed in India, far from home. But that had turned out to be a lucky break, for he discovered quite by accident where they were and what they were doing. In early 1918 he'd been shipped back to London suffering from the bloody flux, almost grateful for that because he was able at last to look into the information he'd come by in Poona. Only he'd misjudged his quarries and made a fool of himself. It wouldn't do to brood on events again. That way lay madness. On the shelves behind him was an array of mechanical and clockwork toys, many of them for adults, like the golden bird that rose from an enameled snuffbox to sing like a nightingale. Banks were a particularly fine subject for such mechanical marvels. A penny tip to the owner sent a performing dog through a hoop. In another example, a grinning bear disappeared down a tree stump as the hunter lifted his rifle to fire. Humor and clever design had gone into the creation of each toy. The shifting weight of the penny set the device concealed in the base into motion, making the action appear to be magical. He had always found such devices fascinating, even after he'd worked out the mechanism that propelled them. His mind grasped the designer's plan very quickly, and sometimes he had bettered it in devices of his own. Skill calling to skill. He took quiet pride in that. A Matter of Justice . Copyright © by Charles Todd . Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold. Excerpted from A Matter of Justice by Charles Todd All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. 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