A Pale Horse

by Charles Todd

Book Overview

The Great War never relinquished its hold on Scotland Yard Inspector Ian Rutledge, leaving him haunted and isolated, unable to forget. In the spring of 1920, he's dispatched to Berkshire to find a... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0061233560
• ISBN13: 9780061233562
• Release Date: December 2007
• Publisher: William Morrow & Company
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Post WWI British mystery

Inspector Rutledge & Hamish are always interesting. The struggle with PTSD makes the novels poignant. This series of books is fun to read, because each book takes place in a different area of England. If you know England and love the variety of eclectic countryside, you'll enjoy the books even more.

And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed wit

Did you know that there is a 3000-year-old, fabulously minimalist horse, carved into the chalk in the hills of Berkshire, England? And that it is longer than an American football field? I sure didn't and that's just one of the reasons to read this or any book by Charles Todd. Every book is a careful mixture of British police procedural, World War I history, and British countryside arcana. This book starts with a murdered body that is carefully staged in an abandoned abbey in the Yorkshire countryside. Although this body is wearing a gas mask, he is found to have died by gas-induced asphyxiation. Meanwhile, Inspector Ian Rutledge is called into the office of his archnemesis, Chief Superintendent Bowles, in the middle of the night and dispatched to Berkshire, where the War Office has misplaced "one of their own". The enigmatic, disappeared man was last seen at his cottage, which is tucked into the hill below the Chalk Horse. And we're off! The story bounces among London, Yorkshire, and Berkshire and the gas-mask man, who may or may not have something to do with the disappearance of Partridge, the War Office's missing man. And all along, we get so much local color! We also get some insights into the many people who returned from World War I with hideous physical damage and worse mental damage. The conscientious objectors in this war were assigned to battlefield duty as ambulance drivers and medics, so they didn't fare much better. The countryside is littered with injured souls, not the least of which is Rutledge, who still carries the voice of Hamish, the dead Scottish soldier in his head. This is 10th book from the mother/son team of Charles Todd, nine of which feature Inspector Rutledge and the ghost of Hamish, who is a fixture in the mind of Rutledge ever since he was forced to execute Hamish for cowardice in the middle of a raging battle in France. This is a special literary device and it works because Todd doesn't overuse it. There is something in me that does not wish to see Rutledge heal to the point where Hamish disappears. By now they seem to be two necessary halves of a whole. And this is another great entry in the continuing saga.

Top Form

Charles Todd is actually two people - a mother/son writing team who live in Delaware and North Carolina. Like other duos before them, most notably Ellery Queen, they create complex, satisfying mystery novels that seem to have been carefully crafted by a single author.Their detective is Inspector Ian Rutledge, introduced in "A False Mirror" and since appearing in eight other stories, including the current book. Here Rutledge, himself somewhat damaged during World War I, is sent to investigate the murder of a man found wearing a gas mask. The story begins in Yorkshire in an ancient abbey and takes Rutledge to Berkshire, where isolated homes built for lepers in the distant past serve as a metaphor for the outcasts who still live in the area. And looking down from its hillside above it all is the chalk-cut figure of a horse. The horse perhaps predates Christianity, but one cannot help but think of the Pale Horse and its Pale Rider.The authors encourage the reader to think so, in fact. They describe the German assault with poison gas during the war as the approach of silent, pale horses. And that is just in the brief first chapter.Full of rich characters and built around a solid idea, "A Pale Horse" is one of the best in the series. Rutledge is operating at the peak of his powers here, and "Todd's" prose is as smooth and graceful as it can be.

haunting post WWI police procedural

In 1920 five kids arrive at abandoned Yorkshire's Fountains Abbey with an alchemy book they stole from their school. They plan to perform a ritual to raise the devil, but instead flee in fear leaving behind the purloined tome. The next day a corpse wearing a gas mask is found near the book. Scotland Yard sends troubled Inspector Ian Rutledge to identify the victim as the War Office has an interest in the body too. Although the Great War to end all wars may be over, Ian still suffers from battle fatigue feeling guilty for what he did and saw. His inquiries of the nearby villagers are met with suspicion as each seems to have something to hide. The alchemy book belongs to a conscientious objector schoolmaster, but he also offers little. As deceit seems the norm, Ian struggles to learn the truth while the pale horse of the Apocalypse reminds the shell shocked detective that death is the final frontier. A PALE HORSE is a fantastic whodunit due to the mentally battered hero whose only respite from the ghost that disturbs him is investigating as this is what he did before he became an unrecognized war "casualty". The story line is fast-paced, but totally owned by Ian even as the audience obtains a deep look at an English village still reeling from the war. This haunting post WWI series remains one of the best historical police procedurals on the market today. Harriet Klausner

Rutledge rides again

Charles Todd, for those who aren't familiar, is a mother and son team of writers who live in the Eastern U.S., and are both of them apparently fervent Anglophiles. They have, for the last decade or so, been collaborating on a series of mysteries chronicling the adventures of Inspector Ian Rutledge of Scotland Yard. As far as a British mystery series is concerned, these books are very conventional in their structure and setting. Rutledge is almost always somewhere out in the rural British countryside, attempting to discover who killed someone in rather murky surroundings. The similarities to Richard Jury or Adam Dalgliesh are very obvious. There is one significant difference, though, and it's what makes the series stand out: the books are set in the period just after the First World War, and Inspector Rutledge is a veteran of said conflict. Even more unique, he's haunted by the ghost of one of his subordinates, a corporal whom Rutledge had to shoot and kill after the man panicked and tried to run away during a battle. The dead man doesn't blame Rutledge for the incident, not exactly anyway, and serves as a sort of alter ego for Rutledge. You're never entirely certain whether Hamish MacLeod's ghost is really there, or merely a figment of Rutledge's imagination, given that he was horribly scarred psychologically by the war. In the current episode, Rutledge is first sent to a hamlet of cottages in rural England to find a single man who lives in one of them. The War Office wants the man found for some reason, though they won't tell Scotland Yard why. Rutledge has no luck, really, and is then recalled and sent in a different direction to look into a killing in another rural setting. The two incidents are of course connected, and Rutledge must settle things as further killings occur, and the plot becomes more tangled. Todd is best with the rural atmosphere of England 80 years ago, and this is one of the better entries in the series. The evocation of the drawing of a horse on a hillside near the cottages is especially spooky. Altogether a good book.