Caroline Todd, A Celebration

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I was heartsick last Saturday to learn of the sudden death of my dear friend Caroline Todd. I had just been talking with her a few weeks before, when she was a guest (always the best guest!) here on Jungle Red, and she was her usual bright and fizzy self. Caroline was not only a friend, she was a huge inspiration to me as a writer. She was a font of plots and ideas--she always had a dozen stories she thought I should tell about Duncan and Gemma and their crew. She would nag me, too, about finishing books ( which I very much deserved) and I hate knowing that she didn't get a chance to read the book in progress. I can only hope she would have liked it.

I was a fan of the Todds' books from the very first Rutledge novel, A TEST OF WILLS, but it was when we began to share the same publisher, William Morrow, that we started to do events and book tours together and really got to be friends. 

We had so much fun together, sometime the three of us, sometimes just Caroline and me. Caroline had so much enthusiasm for everything. I took this photo of her in Charleston a good few years ago-- Caroline shooting Caroline-- and it has ever since been one of my favorite shots of her, because she always wanted to record everything!

All the tours blur together, but little disparate bits stand out for me. One was a visit to Lake Country, Florida, for a book festival; we were put up in a little Holiday Inn that seemed in the middle of nowhere. We had no transportation until the car service was to pick us up for the following day's event, and the only place to eat was a little shack of a place across the asphalt parking lot. We walked over for dinner in great trepidation, crossed a walkway over an alligator-infested inlet, and found ourselves on big deck overlooking a lake. The food, it turned out, was fabulous, and I can still hear Caroline raving about the smoked whitefish dip. We would always talk about that when we got together.

I can track the passage of time from the books in the photos, but Caroline never seemed to change.

RHYS BOWEN: I was utterly shocked and stunned to learn of Caroline Todd’s death last Saturday. On the day when she would have been feted as guest of honor at Bouchercon. What horrible irony.

Caroline was a dear friend. We didn’t see each other often, in the way that it is with the mystery community, but I usually managed to have lunch with her and Barbara Peters when she came to Scottsdale, or share a meal when we both attended the Tuscon Festival of Books. Of course I was on frequent panels with her as we both wrote similar historical series.

A word to sum her up. Lovely. She was a lovely, classy, warm lady. Full of enthusiasm. Always looking forward to the next trip to England and what they would discover there.  Having just started to write a series with my own daughter I looked to the Todds as the role model for the perfect writing team. They brought out the best in each other.  Their myriad fans will be heartbroken. I know I am.

DEBS: Would that all approached life with as much delight, grace, and wit as Caroline. My heart goes out to Charles and all of her family. Hers was truly a life well lived, and the world is a poorer place without her in it.

This Time For Sure @HankPRyan

LUCY BURDETTE: Among the casualties of the current surge in Covid cases in Louisiana was the Bouchercon mystery conference. So many people work so hard to put on a conference of this size, and so many authors and readers had planned to attend--we all felt sad when it had to be cancelled. Our own Hank had been chosen as the editor of the official Bouchercon anthology of stories, with all proceeds from sales designated for the New Orleans library. She chose the theme of second chances. Naturally, most of the sales would have happened at the conference, so we felt really glum. But now the anthology is available and we asked a few of the stellar writers who appear in it to tell us something about how they took off on the second chances theme. I cannot wait to read all the stories! 

Gabriel Valjan on Burnt Ends: The 1987 film Angel Heart, which was an adaptation of William Hjortsberg’s 1978 novel Falling Angel, haunted me, so much so that when I had read Hank’s call and the theme of ‘second chances,’ I knew I wanted to write an atmospheric story that would leave the reader, I daresay, unsettled. I wanted to convey a New Orleans in high swelter, on the verge of a reckoning. “Burnt Ends” is a noirish tale about unfinished business. History is what comes between two men. First, there is a world war and then a pandemic. The HOW and WHY I hope readers enjoy with a Sazerac, NOLA’s official cocktail.

Charles Todd: One of the great things about Bouchercon is the anthology, which is always a fundraiser for a good cause. And this year's is awesome. Thanks to Hank and her team! We can say one thing about our own story--we had such fun writing it. Wait till you see some of the characters Rutledge meets--only in a short story could we get away with testing him like this. Does everyone deserve a second chance? Even a murderer? Hmmmmm. 

Elisabeth Elo on The Unappreciated Wife: As her husband lay dying, Polly Clancy finds herself on the verge of widowhood—and a second chance at happiness. After thirty-seven years playing dutiful second fiddle to an ambitious and demanding husband, she will finally be able to make her own choices and pursue her own interests. So it comes as a shock to find out, quite by accident, that her dream will actually not materialize, at least not in the way she imagined it. Now Polly must finally face herself. What does she really want, and what is she willing to do to get it? 

Alexia Gordon on Love’s Labor: I was living in Newport, Rhode Island when I wrote this story, “virtually in-residence” as a student at the US Naval War College. My classmates and I had all relocated to Newport, excited to study at this prestigious school, founded in 1884 as the staff college for the United States Navy, only to learn that our entire academic experience would be conducted via Zoom. We felt cheated. I wanted a do-over, a second chance to experience all that the Naval War College had to offer. My mood was often as dark as Aquidneck Island’s fog is thick. I’d wander around Newport, a city that dates to 1639, to cheer myself up. I spent a lot of time by the harbor, imagining what Newport must have looked like in its 18th century heyday as a major trade center, filled with ships and rum distilleries and enough people to make it the 9th largest Colonial city. One day, instead of imaginary ships, I saw real teenagers daring each other to jump from the causeway between Newport and Goat Island into the harbor. Their target was a narrow strip of water between the causeway and a pier. Being an old fuddy-duddy and not an invincible teen, my first thought was “Do your parents know what you’re up to? One of you kids is going to whack your head on the pier, and then what?” My next thought was, “And then what? What if a loved one died because of a stupid stunt and you carried that resentment around for years, what would you do?” Love’s Labor was the answer to that question.

Lucy Burdette on Married Seeking Married: About thirteen years ago, I was waiting for my latte in a local coffee shop and spotted this on the cork board nearby: Married Seeking Married. Attractive, safe man (and with honorable reasons!) looking for companion for friendship and intimacy. Oh my gosh, someday this was going to make a doozy of a story, I thought as I pocketed the card. When Hank mentioned the theme for this anthology, I knew the moment had come. Angry divorces, second chances, FantasyFest in Key West with a fairy tale theme--this was a blast to write!

And now a question for Hank: Tell us about the theme and what you were expecting, and how that compared to what turned up in your inbox.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: This is so exciting! And I cannot wait for you all to read this. Here’s the scoop. Last...April? I got a call from the powers that be at Bouchercon--and figured they were setting up a signing for HER PERFECT LIFE and I was delighted to agree. But that was not why they were calling! When they asked me to edit this year’s anthology, I almost fell off my chair, and then of course, with much delight said yes.

All you have to do, they said, is come up with the theme and title, invite authors to participate and get them to say yes and set a deadline for the stories and edit them and organize them and write an introduction and the cover copy and coordinate the promotion. 

Sure, I said. (Having no idea. :-))   

But a few inner workings. I wanted to make sure the collection encouraged and included all authors--so we decided to have a huge widespread call for submissions. We fervently encouraged writers in all stages of their writing lives to submit, and especially encouraged those who had never been in an anthology before. Bouchercon recruited six judges (who we are keeping anonymous) to read the hundreds--I mean hundreds!--of stories that came in. All the submissions were anonymized, so no one knew who had written them.

Meanwhile, all of the New Orleans guests of honor were invited to write a story, and I was also allowed to ask some people who I thought might write terrific stories. I can tell you--they are all amazing! Craig Johnson’s story will break your heart. David Heska Wanbli Weiden--so incredible. Karen Dionne reveals the untold history of the Marsh King’s Daughter. And Alexia Gordon writes a darkly hilarious podcast. And more. 

FInally, the judges--who are definitely saints!--sent me 30 or so still-anonymized stories. I read them, and chose 12.  Out of all those submissions! AndI had NO idea who wrote them. And one of the joys of my life was when I was told who the authors were. People I had never heard of, hurray! First time short-story writers, hurray! Friends--like Gabriel Valjan and Martha Reed and Clair Lamb--hurray! Oh, it brings tears to my eyes.  Can you imagine how much fun it was to see that?  

 It’s called This Time For Sure--which was initially because it was the second Bouchercon in New Orleans. But now, it’s turned out to be a much more ironic title than any of us had imagined.

All the profits go to the New Orleans public library.  They get help from us, you get a terrific book. Please do not miss this--it’s a limited edition, and soon to be a collector’s item. Until we run out, each book will have signed bookplates from some of the authors.  And when the books are gone, they’re gone.

We have one copy of THIS TIME FOR SURE to give away today, but grab your copy here before they're gone!

Charles Todd--An Irish Hostage

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Summer is really here! There's a new Bess Crawford novel from Charles Todd, an event I look forward to every year! Now I just need a little vacation day so that I can read it straight through!

For those who aren't familiar with the series, "Charles Todd" is mother/son writing partners Caroline and Charles, and they write two series, one featuring Scotland Yard Inspector Ian Rutledge, set after WWI, and one featuring English nurse Bess Crawford, set during the war--and now after .

This 12th Bess Crawford novel sees the war over and Bess trying to chart a new course for herself. It takes her to Ireland for the first time. I wanted to know what drew the Todds to Ireland in this complicated post-war period. (Every time I learn even a little about Irish history, I realize how much I don't know.) Caroline explains:

CAROLINE TODD: Bess Crawford took us to the Great War to show how women stepped up to do their bit.  We followed her through the worst of the fighting to the Armistice and the Peace Treaty—even to the tragedy of men who were to become the long term wounded…

But there was one story we hadn’t told—that of the Irish Troubles—because it was a problem that wouldn’t go away for much of the 20th century.

The Irish had been struggling to find a path to home rule, and London made promises, but nothing seemed to come of it.  When war was declared in 1914, Irishmen enlisted in the British Army, in the hope that their service would be rewarded when it was over—dying for Britain in the worst of the fighting.

But others felt this was not going to move London—and the Easter 1916 Rising in Dublin sent Irishmen into the streets to take their freedom with armed insurrection. It was put down, the ringleaders executed—and people who had had mixed feelings about the Rising suddenly found themselves supporting the Cause.

And when the soldiers who had fought for Britain in France returned, they were treated not as heroes, but as traitors, shunned by their own people.

Into this turmoil, Bess is asked to stand up for Eileen, the Irish nurse who nearly died when Britannic went down in A Duty to the Dead. She has healed, her fiancé has just come home from France—and she wants to be married in Ireland in spite of high feelings against both of them.  But Bess’s family is worried for her safety, and the only way they can see for her to travel is by aircraft. In and out for the wedding….

But it doesn’t quite work out as everyone hopes!

And before she knows it, Bess is involved in kidnapping, murder, no idea where to put her trust, and even dragged to a prison cell!

She feels a duty to help those caught in the middle of what is happening—and learns something about her own heart—but how she can save others when she herself is threatened?

DEBS: There is a great flying scene in the beginning of the book, and of course I thought of Caroline and Charles' adventure going up in a biplane. 

 Now I call that serious research!

But I've never been to Ireland, and I want to know more about their Irish background. Caroline and Charles, is Bess's friend's village a real place? Did you get all the material you needed for this book before the pandemic? Tell us more!

 And REDS and readers, have you visited Ireland?

Charles Todd--A FATAL LIE

DEBORAH CROMBIE: You all know how thrilled I am whenever there is a new Charles Todd book! I have been reading both the Inspector Ian Rutledge series and the Bess Crawford series from the very first book and I eagerly await each new installment. How this mother and son (and my good friends!) writing team manages to be so prolific, I don't know!

Caroline Todd is here today to tell us about the newest Rutledge, A FATAL LIE. I loved this book! First, the setting is fabulous. The Pontcysyllte Aqueduct in North Wales is not only one of the wonders of English Victorian engineering--it is also old home territory for me as I lived not too far from it in Chester. I know Shropshire, too, where other parts of the story take place, and have often visited my friends in Ludlow. And there are narrowboats in this book!

I think the Todds were very brave to have taken a narrowboat across the aqueduct, however. I'm not sure I'd have had the nerve. And no way would I walk across it!

Here's Caroline!

CAROLINE: One of the great things about writing is when you find “inspiration,” an idea that grows and blooms and finally takes shape as a book.  You just never know where that inspiration will come from. A photograph—that was THE BLACK ASCOT—a place—A DIVIDED LOYALTY—something we’d read that triggered NO SHRED OF EVIDENCE—it could be anything.  And suddenly your imagination is alive and taking that idea seriously.

           For A FATAL LIE, that inspiration was the Telford Aqueduct in northern Wales, where we took a narrowboat across the valley of the River Dee and looked down at the water far below. If you fell from the horse walk beside us, you’d be killed. We were asked when we got to the other side of the valley and stepped out of the narrowboat whether we’d like to walk back across. Neither of us volunteered!

            But then the question was, who fell? Or was he pushed….

           And over dinner we began to find answers.

           From that beginning, we found ourselves with the story of a good and decent man, whose body was found floating in the river, several days after he’d fallen. As Rutledge searched for the victim’s identity, everyone he interviewed seemed to have a secret they were willing to keep at any price, protected by a tangle of lies and half-truths. And Rutledge had to untangle all the lies, before he could discover which among them was the fatal lie, the one that had sent Sam to his death.

           The more we explored the lives of the people who knew Sam best, the more intrigued we were.  I think that’s the bedrock of a good mystery, that feeling of what’s going to come of this story? You’ve set yourself a puzzle—who killed this man?—and why? And then you begin to realize that the characters have taken on a life of their own and are leading you into paths you never anticipated.

           One of our favorite people was the elderly lawyer who sat like a spider in the center of a web, knowing more than he told, lying when it suited him, confusing the inquiry where he could, and trying to lead Rutledge down rabbit holes of deceit. He wasn’t easy to write, but the challenge of getting him right was well worth the effort because he gave so much to the story.

           And we got to see a side of Rutledge that was interesting too.

           One of the most fascinating aspects of England in the early years of the Twentieth Century, was how insular places were. Most people never traveled more than twenty miles from home. And crime was generally local too. What happened in a Shropshire village wasn’t reported to a Cheshire or Welsh village. A man might kill in Wales, move on and commit another crime in Shrewsbury—and chances were, no one connected the two. This makes life particularly difficult for even the best policemen trying to get to the bottom of a crime. Watching how Rutledge put together facts and leads, untangled the lies, and finally brought a killer to justice made us eager to see what the next day brought to the book.

           Why are we so intrigued with Rutledge—and Bess? Because they take us into a different world that we’re exploring with each mystery we write. We had always read mysteries because they were such terrific puzzles. And now we enjoy creating our own…

A peaceful Welsh village is thrown into turmoil when a terrified boy stumbles on a body in a nearby river. The man appears to have fallen from the canal aqueduct spanning the valley. But there is no identification on the body, he isn’t a local, and no one will admit to having seen him before. With little to go on, the village police turn to Scotland Yard for help.

In one of his most puzzling cases, Scotland Yard Inspector Ian Rutledge must delve deep into a dead man’s life and his past to find a killer determined to keep dark secrets buried.

DEBS: Caroline, I have to ask, did you learn to pronounce Pontcysyllte?? Spelling it is hard enough!

READERS, tell us if you'd walk across that bridge!

What We're Reading

LUCY BURDETTE: For some reason (and happily so), I’ve been reading more than usual lately. along with an old friend, I’ve gotten on a binge of Indian-themed books. (The country, not the native Americans.) The latest was an incredible memoir of growing up in Bombay by Thrity Umrigar. She shows no mercy in exposing both her own flaws and those of her complicated family—and oh the fascinating foreignness of Bombay. Luckily for me, she’s also written a  handful of novels that are now on my Christmas list. I’ve also read the first novel by an Icelandic author, Ragnar Jonasson, called SNOW BLIND. Although there were some point of view shifts that drove me a little nuts, they were overshadowed by a fascinating young policeman character and the sheer frigidness of the setting in northern Iceland. Now I’m dying to visit—but not in winter.

And at this moment, we are traveling south and so listened to Paula Hawkins' GIRL ON A TRAIN. I'm not sure I would have made it through this book reading, but it was a compelling story to listen to. I wasn't crazy about the characters, but the author gave a master class on sustaining suspense.

Reds, what are you reading?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  I am hiding my secret smile to tell you I have an ARC of the new Charles Todd, a Rutledge! Which is called RACING THE DEVIL and it is terrific. I don't  know how they keep doing it!.  I am reading THE LAST DAYS OF NIGHT about the battle between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse--it's a thriller, and it's terrific.   And Susan Wolfe's hilarious and biting and sly ESCAPE VELOCITY where the main character is a female con artist who infiltrates the boardrooms of Silicon Valley. It is absolutely great. In fact, I'm going to ask her to do a guest blog.  And Chris Holm's amazing RED RIGHT HAND, the second in his award winning Hendricks thrillers--about an assassin who only kills  assassins. Brilliant. Plus he is a very cool guy, Oh, and AVID READER, thte memoir of editor Robert Gottleib. And! after meeting and chatting with Colson Whitehead (he was wearing red leather pants, just saying) I am of course reading UNDERGROUND RAILROAD.  Which I would have read anyway.

And hey, you all, you're reading SAY NO MORE, right? As we speak, I am on the plane to Delray Beach to appear at Murder on the Beach! So come see me!

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Do political blogs count? Because it seems like I'm spending most of my time with the Washington Post, The New York Times, 538, Real Clear Politics, The Atlantic, TPM, The Slot, Concourse... obviously, I need to start relaxing with some soothing reads about WWII.

The audio book in my car is The Secret Life of the Grown-up Brain: The Surprising Talents of the Middle-Aged Mind by Barbara Strauch. It's engaging and well-written and is making me feel a lot better about forgetting words in the middle of a sentence! I'm also narrating a book: Youngest was assigned HEART OF DARKNESS in her AP Comp and Lit class and she was finding it hard going (it does have a very hallucinogenic, head-switching point of view.) So I've been reading it aloud to her and am enjoying it much more than she is.

My latest fiction is J Courtney Sullivan's MAINE. I like her writing very much - I've already enjoyed THE ENGAGEMENTS and, of course, COMMENCEMENT, which is practically required reading for parents of Smithies. Sullivan's books are steeped in the kind of modern New England sensibility that only comes from being born and bred in the area.

Now I'm off to send an email to Chris Holm to ask him where MY copy of RED RIGHT HAND is!

HALLIE EPHRON: I'm starting to write a new novel about a woman who tries to declutter her life, so I'm reading Marie Kondo's THE LIFE-CHANGING MAGIC OF TIDYING UP. It's short. And I confess it hasn't inspired me to straighten my sock basket.

When I was in British Columbia for the Surrey International Writers Conference last week I came home with books that I'm enjoying. Loving Eileen Cook's WTH MALICE, about a teenager who wakes up in the hospital to find she's lost weeks of her life. Next I'm reading K C Dyer's FINDING FRASER - a girl falls in love with a hero ripped from the pages of her favorite novel, the Scottish fictional star of romantic fantasies the world over—James Alexander Malcolm MacKenzie Fraser. Then I'll get back to finishing reading THE GOLDFINCH.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I just finished a book my daughter highly recommended, BLOOD ON THE TRACKS, a stunningly good first novel by Denver writer Barbara Nickless. The protagonist, Sydney Rose Parnell, is an Iraq vet now working for the railroad police. It's gritty and gripping and will make you feel bone-numbingly cold! Oh, and Sydney Rose has a K-9 partner, Clyde, who is also a veteran.

When I'm in London I always hit the Buy 1, Get 50% Off a Second Book at the book chains. I'm reading the first of the two I bought, another police thriller but this time British, MISSING, PRESUMED, by Susie Steiner. So far it's really good, with very richly drawn detail and very human characters.  The other book I bought is called THE FORGETTING TIME by Sharon Guskin and it has great reviews. My audio book in progress is I HEAR THE SIRENS IN THE STREET, the second book in Adrian McKinty's Detective Sean Duffy novels, set in Ireland during the Troubles. I think McKinty's books are some of the best being written in crime fiction. Great voice, great atmosphere, and a fascinating look at life in Belfast in the early 80s.

Now, if I could just wean myself off the political news, I'd have so much more time to read...

Dear Reds, what are you reading?

Charles Todd--The Shattered Tree: A New Bess Crawford

DEBORAH CROMBIE: What a treat we have today! One (two, actually) of my favorite authors, mother and son writing team CHARLES TODD (Charles and Caroline!) are here with us to talk about their new book featuring WWI battlefield nurse Bess Crawford, THE SHATTERED TREE, out on August 30th.  (And what gorgeous cover!)

The Todds are such an inspiration to me. They write TWO terrific books a year, one featuring shell-shocked Scotland Yard detective Ian Rutledge in post WWI England, and the other featuring Bess, a colonel's daughter who joins the British nursing service at the beginning of the war, a time when nice young women did NOT do those things. The books are chock full of research but are so gripping that only later do you realize you've learned history. The Bess books are to me particularly vivid, because they are told in first person and often in the midst of the battlefield action.

Here's what happens in THE SHATTERED TREE:


At the foot of a tree shattered by shelling and gunfire, stretcher-bearers find an exhausted officer, shivering with cold and a loss of blood from several wounds. The soldier is brought to battlefield nurse Bess Crawford’s aid station, where she stabilizes him and treats his injuries before he is sent to a rear hospital. The odd thing is, the officer isn’t British—he’s French. But in a moment of anger and stress, he shouts at Bess in German.

When Bess reports the incident to Matron, her superior offers a ready explanation. The soldier is from Alsace-Lorraine, a province in the west where the tenuous border between France and Germany has continually shifted through history, most recently in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, won by the Germans. But is the wounded man Alsatian? And if he is, on which side of the war do his sympathies really lie?

Of course, Matron could be right, but Bess remains uneasy—and unconvinced. If he was a French soldier, what was he doing so far from his own lines . . . and so close to where the Germans are putting up a fierce, last-ditch fight?

When the French officer disappears in Paris, it’s up to Bess—a soldier’s daughter as well as a nurse—to find out why, even at the risk of her own life.

I loved this book! It was fascinating to see wartime Paris through Bess's eyes. And of course I was thrilled to have the chance to ask the Todds what inspired them. Here's Caroline to fill us in.


*Why Paris, when Bess was so at home in London and other parts of England?

 Paris was where many English officers and a lot of Aussie enlisted men went to recuperate from their wounds,  and we really hadn’t done much with it. So this was our chance, and that meant creating a French mystery to use it more thoroughly than an English mystery would have done.   And THAT meant a whole bucket full of new research!  We found some really fascinating material about the salons and a designer who worked on French Army uniforms, and all sorts of odd tidbits that didn’t fit the book but were fun to discover.  You wouldn’t believe some of it.  Like a French air ace and his relationship with a French designer.

 *She was out of her comfort zone there—without her father’s knowledge and influence, without Simon, and so on.  How did you manage that?

That made for very interesting opportunities!  We needed some new characters.  That meant learning enough about the period in France to draw them well.  People who really would have been there, people Bess would have been able to turn to, not just handing her versions of her English background.  You’ve done much the same in Cambridge and Cheshire—where your characters are out of their element.

 *You bring back a very popular character in Captain Barkley, the American serving with the Canadian forces. How did he fit into this new setting?

 He’s there to help Bess—but she doesn’t quite trust him!  And he has his own agenda, one part of which is trying to keep Bess safe, and only succeeding in creating problems.  Bess has been used to the freedom that being raised wherever the Regiment was sent, and she missed out on many of the more suffocating English views of women carrying over from the Victorians.  He wants to make sure she doesn’t run into trouble, he wants to see her rest in bed and take care of her own wound and stay out of trouble, but Bess knows her own mind, and much as she likes the Captain, she just isn’t the sort of woman who is afraid of doing anything a man would disapprove of as “unladylike.”   She’s more modern because of her upbringing than many of her contemporaries.  And many of the young women who chose to become nurses often faced these ideas of what a well brought up young lady should see or do or know about.   When it came to bathing the wounded, most Victorian women had never seen a grown man in his underwear much less stark naked, and for many it was more shocking than the wounds they’d suffered.

 *Where does Bess go from here?

(How the devil do I know, we’ve only got a few chapters written!)  Ahem.  Next year’s Bess,  A CASUALTY OF WAR,  goes back to the Front as the war draws to a close. And there is a patient from Barbados in the Caribbean, serving as an English officer, who is certain he was shot by another English officer he recognized, although all the Army’s records show that this man was killed in an attack two years before.  What really happened there in No Man’s Land during that awful retreat when he was wounded? Is this young officer suffering from shell shock or mentally unstable from the strain of war?  He’s a long way from home, and Bess tries to find out just what the truth is.

 *How is Rutledge doing?

 He’s currently in production for next winter.  RACING THE DEVIL starts in France where five English officers who survived the Great War have met in Paris to race each other to Nice. But something goes wrong, and a year later,  tragedy appears to have followed them to England. 

DEBS: Caroline and Charles will be stopping in to answer questions, and will be giving away a copy of THE SHATTERED TREE to a lucky commenter, so get your oar in!

Charles Todd--No Shred of Evidence

DEBORAH CROMBIE: As I said at the beginning of the week, my one consolation for coming home from Left Coast Crime in Phoenix with the flu was my copy of Charles Todd's new Ian Rutledge novel, No Shred of Evidence, clutched in my hot (literally) little hand.

I am such a fan. I have been since the first Rutledge novel, A Test of Wills (talk about a binge read!), and long before I was privileged to know Charles and Caroline, the mother/son writing team who are "Charles Todd."

Caroline, unfortunately, was one of the many other people who went home from Phoenix with the flu, and she is still really under the weather. So we're going to do something a little different today. I'm going to talk about the book, and then Caroline is going to chat with us in the comments. AND she is going to give a copy of NO SHRED OF EVIDENCE to one of our commenters!

First, here's the synopsis:

In this absorbing new entry in the acclaimed New York Times bestselling series, Scotland Yard’s Ian Rutledge is caught up in a twisted web of vengeance and murder.

On the north coast of Cornwall, an apparent act of mercy is repaid by an arrest for murder. Four young women have been accused of the crime. A shocked father calls in a favor at the Home Office. Scotland Yard is asked to review the case.

However, Inspector Ian Rutledge is not the first Inspector to reach the village. Following in the shoes of a dead man, he is told the case is all but closed. Even as it takes an unexpected personal turn, Rutledge will require all his skill to deal with the incensed families of the accused, the grieving parents of the victim, and local police eager to see these four women sent to the infamous Bodmin Gaol. Then why hasn’t the killing stopped?

With no shred of evidence to clear the accused, Rutledge must plunge deep into the darkest secrets of a wild, beautiful and dangerous place if he is to find a killer who may—or may not—hold the key to their fate.

Oh, there's so much this doesn't say! I'm going to have to try really, really hard not to give spoilers.

This is the 18th Rutledge novel. Can you believe it? If it seems like hardly any time has passed since the beginning of the series, it is in large part because the novels are so gripping. But it is also because little time has passed for Ian Rutledge. Remember we were talking about fluid time with Glen Erik Hamilton the other day, and of how writers must make a decision about how to handle time in a series? A Test of Wills takes place in June of 1919, when Rutledge, suffering from PTSD, takes up the job he held before the war as a detective with Scotland Yard. No Shred of Evidence has moved forward to the autumn of 1920. Less than a year and a half has elapsed. (For a recent reference, the last episodes of Downton Abbey take place in 1924.) So that is my first question for Caroline and Charles: did you decide, at the beginning of the series, that time would move very slowly? It gives the series a great immediacy, almost as if we were living Rutledge's life along with him.

The book takes place in northern Cornwall, and oh, golly, do I wish a map was included in the book! I was too engrossed in the story (the binge read) to stop and look up the geography, but I did afterwards. The sense of place is so strong I find myself thinking about the village as if I'd been there. Why Cornwall, Caroline and Charles? And why this particular part of Cornwall? 

And I realize there's probably no easy answer to this, but how do you manage to imagine the setting so realistically as it was then? (Other than time travel, of course...)

The village (is it a real place?) is just there, near Rock and Padstow.

I can't say too much about the plot, but I will tell you that there is a fun twisty-turny time thing. The previous book, A Fine Summer's Day (which I adored) takes us back to 1914, the summer before the beginning of the war. We see Ian Rutledge as he was before the horrors of the trenches damaged him so badly, and there is an almost unbearable suspense in the fact that we know what is coming. We also meet Rutledge's fiance, Jean, and her cousin, a young woman named Kate Gordon. Kate is a strong and engaging character and I hoped to see her again. She is indeed back in No Shred of Evidence, one of the four young women accused of murder. There's an obvious affinity between Ian Rutledge and Kate.  
Are we allowed to hope that Rutledge might be allowed to find some personal happiness, Caroline and Charles? Alas, I fear that life can't run too smoothly for our fictional heroes and heroines, but I can't wait to see what happens next. Any hints?

I have to tell a little story on Caroline. When she told me she'd arrived home from Phoenix with a horrible case of the flu, she said, "It's given me a whole new perspective on the Spanish flu..." I think that's taking research a bit too far, Caroline! Armchair only, next time, please!

Readers, please stop and chat with Caroline and Charles in the comments. And join us at JRW in wishing Caroline a huge GET WELL SOON!

How Fast Do You Read

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Talking about reading books straight through the other day started me wondering how fast I actually read. Years ago--college days--I took a speed reading course. Even though I'd always been a fast reader, I thought it might help with college texts. As it turned out, any gains I made were surely lost to those biology books painstakingly highlighted with yellow marker, and I'd never worried about it much since.

I read for work, and for pleasure, on printed pages and on all sorts of screens. But I've calculated, roughly, when I'm alloting my nightly reading time, that I read about fifty pages an hour.

Therefore it makes sense that I read the new Charles Todd, No Shred of Evidence, which is a little over three hundred pages, in six to seven hours. But how fast is that, really?

So I took a couple of tests.  Here's one, from Staples. I tried several and tested a little under 400 words a minute, with 100% comprehension. Now the average is 200--400 words a minute, so this is not blazingly fast. (Although I suspect when I'm at the crucial part of a good novel, I read considerably faster...) Some speed reading apps and programs claim you can learn to read as fast as 1000 words a minute.

I did a little more research and discovered that speed reading has made a comeback, and that there are all sorts of different apps and different methods you can use to improve your reading speed.  There are also lots of theories about the way reading on screens changes the way our brains process words. As you can probably guess, I found myself going down the information rabbit hole, and there is some fascinating stuff out there.

But does reading faster actually improve your reading experience? My take, both from my very shallow bit of research, and from my own experience, is that it does NOT.

While you may be able to hang on to comprehension, you are likely to lose emotional engagement. And if you read for language as well as story, appreciating good prose just takes a little time. 

(How many of you reread the ends of books, because you've rushed through them in order to see what happens??)

However, there is a little nagging voice that says, "But given an hour-a-night reading block, I could read two books a week instead of one..." 

What about you, REDS and readers? Do you know how fast you read? And are you tempted by the speed reading apps?