Wings of Fire (Ian Rutledge Mysteries)

Author - Charles Todd ... [Goo?] [Posters]

This Mass Market Paperback Book item from St. Martin´s Paperbacks was reviewed on 24-Oct-2008.

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1) Mass Market Paperback Book Wings of Fire (Ian Rutledge Mysteries) by St. Martin´s Paperbacks. In "Wings of Fire" Charles Todd has all eyes focusing on a grand English country house called, quite simply, the Hall. The matriarch of the Hall had been Rosamund Beatrice Trevelyan, the beautiful and infectiously happy daughter of Adrian Trevelyan. She had married three husbands, each of whom had died too soon. And she had a subsequent suitor.

Altogether, she had six children, two with each husband. Husbands, children, servants, locals, everyone adored her.

At the Hall, recent deaths had briefly assembled together the few remaining family members, and they hear Rosamund´s daughter Susannah bitterly bemoaning the changes: "Mother had such life! Such warmth. There was always laughter, brightness, here. And that´s all disappeared, it--it drained away without our knowing it, after she died. I´ve come to hate the Hall. I never actually realized that until now. And after dinner we´re leaving."

Rosamund had known grief. When first husband Captain George Marlowe died of cholera during a return trip to India, she was deeply bereft. James Cheney, her second husband, a best friend of Marlowe´s, died while cleaning his guns. Third husband, Brian FitzHugh, was thrown by his horse, hit his head on the rocks, and drowned in the surf.

Rachel, a cousin on the Marlowe side of the family, summed up Rosamund´s husbands: "George was a wonderful man, exciting and very masculine. James was a fine man, with depths and intelligence and a sense of humor, and Brian FitzHugh loved her so much she couldn´t help but love him back."

Rosamund´s children by Captain Marlowe were identical twins, Olivia and Anne Marlowe, whom others found indistinguishable. Anne had died as a child in a fall from an apple tree.

Next were Rosamund´s sons Nicholas and Richard Cheney. As a five-year-old, Richard was lost on the moors while at a family picnic, wandered off, disappeared, and after extensive searching was presumed dead . . . or stolen by gypsies.

By Rosamund´s third husband, Brian FitzHugh, she had a second set of twins, Susannah and Stephen FitzHugh. Brian had already had a son and brought him along, the strikingly handsome Cormac FitzHugh.

Inspector Ian Rutledge is sent from London´s Scotland Yard to this far reach--to Cornwall, the most southwesterly county in England-- to investigate the presumed joint suicides of Olivia Marlowe and her half brother Nicholas Cheney, along with the near simultaneous accidental death by falling down stairs of their half brother Stephen FitzHugh.

Were Olivia Marlowe and Nicholas Cheney double suicides, or were they a murder-suicide, or two murders? Did Stephen fall down the stairs, or what?

One soon begins to realize the need to keep in mind who was who, and who is who, among this large family, especially as the survivors come down to Susannah, her husband Daniel Hargrove, her cousin Rachel, and stepbrother Cormac FitzHugh.

The police and villagers think London´s Scotland Yard has sent Rutledge on a fool´s errand, that the deaths by suicide and accident should be left as is. The local Constable had been told: "Humor the man from Scotland Yard ... What he wants, let him have. As long as he returns to London as soon as possible, and with no cause to give a black eye to the local police in the matter of doing their duty." A local doctor scolds Rutledge: "You´re mad, d´you know that? Stark, staring mad!"

Further complications arise because Olivia Marlowe was writing pseudonymously as the well-known poet O. A. Manning. What has happened to her valuable papers? Rutledge begins to wonder about all the other deaths in the family, even the early ones, of Anne and Richard, of the three husbands, of Rosamund herself.

The mystery is gripping. The writing superb. A page-turner.
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2) Mass Market Paperback Book Wings of Fire (Ian Rutledge Mysteries) by St. Martin´s Paperbacks. Charles Todd´s second book in the Ian Rutledge series is a wonderfully complex immersion in an amazingly dysfunctional family. Rutledge and his ever-present "companion" Hamish slowly unravel the story of the Trevelyan family with the aid of a village full of wonderful characters. I can´t wait to read "Search the Dark." A friend of mine introduced me to the first book in the series, "A Test of Wills", and now I am truly hooked. It´s a treat to discover a series like this. It´s been a long time. Thanks!!¤

3) Mass Market Paperback Book Wings of Fire (Ian Rutledge Mysteries) by St. Martin´s Paperbacks. This is the second of Charles Todd´s Inspector Rutledge series, but the first one I read. Having gone back to the first, "A Test of Wills," I can honestly say that this isn´t a series I´m going to continue with. Todd´s ideas aren´t bad, but he draws the stories out endlessly, with Rutledge interviewing and re-interviewing and re-re-interviewing suspects again and again...and not really getting anywhere. And in both books, Rutledge´s irrascible Chief Inspector (himself a tired cliche) assigns him the case hoping that he´ll screw up and get kicked off the force. Talk about repetitive plotting; in some ways it felt like reading the same book twice. Perhaps this series gets better in subsequent installments, but with so much else to read out there, I won´t be finding out.¤

4) Mass Market Paperback Book Wings of Fire (Ian Rutledge Mysteries) by St. Martin´s Paperbacks. A great deal on a book I wasn´t able to purchase any where else¤

5) Mass Market Paperback Book Wings of Fire (Ian Rutledge Mysteries) by St. Martin´s Paperbacks.
"Wings of Fire" is one of the series of Ian Rutledge mysteries by the author Charles Todd--a mother/son American writing team, in fact, the second in the series. Set in post World War I Britain, these mysteries have as their compelling main character Ian Rutledge, a Scotland Yard inspector who is the worse for the war, but slowly mending.

In this book, Rutledge is called upon to research a brother and sister double suicide, followed shortly thereafter by a third death in the family. Rutledge travels to the Cornish coast this time, and as in the other books, he travels in the company of his dead sergeant, Hamish, who speaks his mind to Rutledge as he works through the investigation.

This mystery involves a beautiful house by the sea, and is peopled by both the gentry who have lived in that house and the inhabitants of the local village, including the vicar, the doctor and so forth. The house and its setting may remind some readers of "Rebecca", especially since the memory of the home´s now dead mistress seems to permeate the proceedings, even as her portrait presides over the drawing room.

The book does not get off to a fast paced start--indeed, it seems a bit slow in the first 100 pages. And for this reader, there is not enough conversation from Hamish in that portion or in the rest of the book. Unlike others in the series, we do not hear much of Hamish´s actual words--more often Todd tells us that Hamish was grumbling or making some remark. But we don´t "hear" the remark. A pity, that.

I felt that the writing was a tad uneven. I would be bogged down in a section of the book, say, about half of a chapter, and then all of the sudden the pace picked up, the storyline became more compelling, and I was eager to know more. Then, back to the slower pace and, for me, a challenge to get through it to the next, livelier portion.

Occasionally, Todd takes us to a higher plain of psychological and perhaps even theological conversation--several of the interviews Rutledge has with the vicar provide the setting for some of these. They are among the best passages in the book.

Since the work of a famous poet figures in the story, we are also treated to more than prose from Todd´s hand, and the sections of verse are deftly done.

The last several chapters are quite good--both as the mystery is revealed and the creativity shown by the author in settings and dialogue. It made me go back and read the first chapter again, once I had finished the final chapter.

This is the second in remarkable series of classic whodunits. The reader will be hooked. And will wish to read all of the Rutledge mysteries, in order. A Test of Wills, Wings of Fire, Search the Dark, Legacy of the Dead, Watchers of Time, A Fearsome Doubt, A Cold Treachery, A Long Shadow. There is also a stand-alone Todd mystery called A Murder Stone, without Rutledge or Hamish. Read more about them at: www.Charlestodd.com At one point, that website indicated that a Rutledge book was going to be adapted for the Mystery series on PBS...

Todd intertwines the supporting characters from book to book, so that Rutledge´s and Hamish´s friends and family you meet herein will appear in subsequent books, at some times, mentioned, and other times, key to the story.

If you find this review helpful you might want to read some of my other reviews, including those on subjects ranging from biography to architecture, as well as religion and fiction.
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6) Mass Market Paperback Book Wings of Fire (Ian Rutledge Mysteries) by St. Martin´s Paperbacks.

7) Mass Market Paperback Book Wings of Fire (Ian Rutledge Mysteries) by St. Martin´s Paperbacks. When A Test of Wills, Charles Todd´s first mystery about a shell-shocked World War I veteran, came out, it was such an original and successfully executed concept that readers were torn between wanting more and wondering how he could possibly pull off a sequel. Todd does it very simply: he pushes the gimmick sideways and makes his Scotland Yard detective, Ian Rutledge, much more personally involved in the death of one of the possible murder victims than he was in the first book. While the voice of Hamish, the Scottish soldier he executed for battlefield cowardice, still growls in his mind, Inspector Rutledge also feels very deeply about Olivia Marlowe, a supposed suicide in the Cornwall town of Borcombe. He knew her as O. A. Manning, a poet whose books, especially the love poems collected in Wings of Fire, were "light and warmth and beauty intermingled with such passion that they sang in the heart as you read them. Wings of Fire had touched him in ways that few things had." Olivia´s death, along with that of two members of her family, have brought Rutledge from London to investigate. But, as a sharp local clergyman tells him, "Be sure your own ghosts don´t infringe on your logical mind--don´t rain havoc on Borcombe in search of your own absolution."¤

Page Updated: Robert N. Goolsby, 21-Nov-2008, 03129656809780312965686, 450-800-810-580-660-740-8

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