Scotland Yard's Inspector Rutledge is called out in a violent blizzard to investigate a multiple murder. All the members of the Elcott family, save one, has been murdered at their table without the least sign of struggle. One of the Elcott's children, a boy named Josh, is missing. Rutledge must race to uncover a murderer and to save a child before he's silenced by the merciless elements.

"A horrific explosion at a gunpowder mill sends Bess Crawford to war-torn France to keep a deadly pattern of lies from leading to more deaths, in this compelling and atmospheric mystery... An explosion and fire at the Ashton Gunpowder Mill in Kent has killed over a hundred men. It's called an appalling tragedy-- until suspicion and rumor raise the specter of murder. While visiting the Ashton family, Bess Crawford finds herself caught up in a venomous...

When the clues in a hit-and-run investigation lead him to two families famous for producing and selling the world's best Madeira wine, Scotland Yard's Ian Rutledge is pitted against his new supervisor who, dismissing the evidence, has his own suspect.

The first novel to feature war-damaged Scotland Yard inspector Ian Rutledge, A Test of Wills is the book that brought author Charles Todd into the spotlight. This Edgar® and Anthony Award-nominated, New York Times Notable mystery brilliantly evokes post-World War I Great Britain and introduces readers to one of crime fiction's most compelling series protagonists. Here the shell-shocked Rutledge struggles to retain his fragile grip on sanity while...

Independent-minded Bess Crawford's upbrining is far different from that of the usual upper-middle-class British gentlewoman. At the outbreak of WWI, she volunteers for the nursing corps, serving from the battlefields of France to the doomed hospital ship Britannic. On one voyage, she promises to a deliver a message from a dying officer to his brother. Once she's able to do so, she's disturbed at the brother's indifferent reception of the message,...

Inspector Ian Rutledge travels to a small Dorset town to investigate the murder of a young mother and the disappearance of her two daughters.

While Ian Rutledge searches for a missing man, Walter Teller, he is attacked by a young man who goes on a murderous spree with victims all resembling Rutledge, but after Teller mysteriously reappears, another woman is found dead and the Teller family is implicated in her death.

"The Great War is still raging in the autumn of 1916, when Francesca Hatton's beloved grandfather dies on the family estate in England's isolated Exe Valley. Grieving for the man who raised her, Francesca is stunned to find an unsigned letter among his effects, cursing the Hattons and their descendants. Now a stranger has shown up on her doorstep, accusing her grandfather of being a murderer."--Publisher website (August 2006)

“If anyone can turn a simple village mystery into a brooding Greek tragedy, it’s Charles Todd. . . . Todd handles grave issues with great compassion”—The New York Times Book Review 

 In a marshy Norfolk backwater, a priest is brutally murdered after giving a dying man last rites. For Scotland Yard’s Ian Rutledge, an ex-officer still recovering from the trauma of war,...

"In 1908, when a young Bess Crawford lived in India, an unforgettable incident darkened the otherwise happy time. Her father's regiment discovered it had a murderer in its ranks, an officer who killed five people yet was never brought to trial. A decade later, tending to the wounded on the battlefields of France during World War I, Bess learns from a dying man that the alleged murderers, Lieutenant Wade, is alive and serving at the Front. According...