Critic Oline Cogdill recently reviewed Charles Todd’s latest Inspector Ian Rutledge mystery for the South Florida Sun Sentinel, and shared the review with us. There are signed copies of Todd’s A Day of Judgment available through The Poisoned Pen’s Webstore. https://tinyurl.com/hjuzamze
Thank you to Oline Cogdill for sharing the review.
Book review: A glimmer of hope for Inspector Ian Rutledge in ‘A Day of Judgment’
‘A Day of Judgment: An Inspector Ian Rutledge Mystery’ by Charles Todd; Mysterious Press; 368 pages; $28.99
“A Day of Judgment,” the 25th full-length Ian Rutledge novel written by Charles Todd works as a double history — both as a look at post-World War I and as a milestone in this best-selling series.
Todd wrote the first 24 Ian novels with his mother, Caroline, under the name Charles Todd. Caroline Todd passed away in 2021. While Charles Todd published the novella “A Christmas Witness” in 2025, “A Day of Judgment” marks his first solo novel. (The author also plans to continue the duo’s second series, about WWI nurse Bess Crawford.)
“A Day of Judgment” shows Todd’s most incisive plotting — his fine eye for the English landscape and in-depth look at characters, especially Scotland Yard detective Ian Rutledge, whose trauma in the trenches during WWI vividly persists.
In July 1921, Ian receives his long-awaited promotion to chief inspector. But he doesn’t even have time to unpack his new office when his supervisor sends him to Northumberland to investigate the death of Oswin Dunn, a pilot whose body washed ashore near Lindisfarne, also known as “the Holy Island.” His supervisor stresses several times that Ian is representing Scotland Yard and that the investigation must be handled with “delicacy.” That area is called “the cradle of Christianity in England,” where religious visitors annually flock. The Church of England is concerned a murder will harm tourism.
An autopsy reveals that Dunn didn’t drown but was bludgeoned. As he investigates, Ian finds that this part of England is vehemently anti-German. Stores won’t even stock German goods, such as Dresden china, nor will cafes and pubs serve German dishes. The residents remember that many of the area’s young men died in the war, and the once-prosperous region now is economically depressed. Few seem to care about the murder of Oswin, whose brother-in-law was German. Oswin also was resented because he investigated the British Royal Navy’s HMS Ascot’s sinking before the 1918 armistice.
“A Day of Judgment” moves at a brisk pace as Ian’s investigation takes him through Northumberland, which is both beautiful and bleak. As ever, Ian must keep his post-traumatic stress disorder — which was called shell-shock in those days — quiet, because this was considered a sign of cowardness.
Ian, as Todd has shown numerous times, is no coward. While Ian will always deal with the emotional fallout of the war, Todd gives him a glimmer of hope as he begins his new position at Scotland Yard.
And Todd gives his longtime readers hope that the series will continue.