The Red Door by Charles Todd

I enjoyed this twelfth installment in the Inspector Ian Rutledge Mystery series.  I stumbled upon the series earlier this year when I was doing research on WWI and have happily gobbled them up one by one.  There is one more to read before the fourteenth novel is released in early January.  The mysteries are always interesting, and Rutledge remains intriguing.  However, I have felt his personal development, as well as that of his personal life have been very slow to evolve.  This novel gave us more of a glimpse into his relationships with his sister, godfather, and potential love interest.  I hope Todd continues along this angle because it gives Rutledge more depth.  He also ratchets up the conflict between Rutledge and his superior at Scotland Yard, who has been out to get him since the first book of the series.  I'm eager to see where this will lead.  Another solid entry in a entertaining and well-written series.

New York Times bestselling author Charles Todd brings back Scotland Yard detective Ian Rutledge in another riveting mystery set in post–World War I England Lancashire, England, June 1920. In a house with a red door lies the body of a woman who has been bludgeoned to death. Rumor has it that two years earlier, she’d painted that door to welcome her husband back from the Front. Only he never came home.

Meanwhile, in London, a man suffering from a mysterious illness first goes missing and then just as suddenly reappears. He is unable to explain his recovery. His family, supposedly searching for him, give conflicting accounts of where they were and why. What is the secret that nearly drove one man mad and turned his brothers and sister against one another with such unexpected savagery?

Inspector Ian Rutledge, drawn into both cases and facing a wall of silence, must solve two mysteries before he can bring a ruthless killer to justice: Who was the woman who lived and died behind the red door? Who was the man who never came home from the Great War, for the simple reason that he might never have gone? And what have they to do with a man who cannot break the seal of his own guilt without damning those he loves most?