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A Pale Horse: An Inspector Ian Rutledge Mystery (Inspector Ian Rutledge Mysteries)
by Charles Todd
Product Group: Book
Publisher: William Morrow (2008-01-01)
ISBN: 0061233560
EAN: 9780061233562
Dewy Decimal #: 813.54
Hardcover: 336 pages
Release Date: 2007-12-26
SKU: 08090197
Condition: Like New Like New
Comments: Hardcover. Like new cover and text. Like new dust jacket with very minor shelfwear. Near Fine condition. Beautiful book.
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
In the ruins of Yorkshire's Fountains Abbey lies the body of a man wrapped in a cloak, the face covered by a gas mask. Next to him is a book on alchemy, which belongs to the schoolmaster, a conscientious objector in the Great War. Who is this man, and is the investigation into his death being manipulated by a thirst for revenge? Meanwhile, the British War Office is searching for a missing man of their own, someone whose war work was so secret that even Rutledge isn't told his real name or what he did. The search takes Rutledge to Berkshire, where cottages once built to house lepers stand in the shadow of a great white horse cut into the chalk hillside. The current inhabitants of the cottages are outcasts, too, hiding from their own pasts. Who among them is telling the truth about their neighbors and who is twisting it? Here is a puzzle requiring all of Rutledge's daring and skill, for there are layers of lies and deception, while a ruthless killer is determined to hold on to freedom at any cost. And the pale horse looming overhead serves as a reminder that death is never finished with anyone, least of all the men who fought in the trenches of France.
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Customer Reviews
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Just OK
Rating  (3)
Date: 2008-12-30
Another Ian Rutledge book with engaging period flavor. Unfortunately, this tale is a bit confused and hard to follow in places. Definitely not the author's best work. I found myself impatient to finish the book and get on to something better.
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And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. Revelation 6:8
Rating  (5)
Date: 2008-12-13
Did you know that there is a 3000-year-old, fabulously minimalist horse, carved into the chalk in the hills of Berkshire, England? And that it is longer than an American football field? I sure didn't and that's just one of the reasons to read this or any book by Charles Todd. Every book is a careful mixture of British police procedural, World War I history, and British countryside arcana.
This book starts with a murdered body that is carefully staged in an abandoned abbey in the Yorkshire countryside. Although this body is wearing a gas mask, he is found to have died by gas-induced asphyxiation. Meanwhile, Inspector Ian Rutledge is called into the office of his archnemesis, Chief Superintendent Bowles, in the middle of the night and dispatched to Berkshire, where the War Office has misplaced "one of their own". The enigmatic, disappeared man was last seen at his cottage, which is tucked into the hill below the Chalk Horse. And we're off!
The story bounces among London, Yorkshire, and Berkshire and the gas-mask man, who may or may not have something to do with the disappearance of Partridge, the War Office's missing man. And all along, we get so much local color! We also get some insights into the many people who returned from World War I with hideous physical damage and worse mental damage. The conscientious objectors in this war were assigned to battlefield duty as ambulance drivers and medics, so they didn't fare much better. The countryside is littered with injured souls, not the least of which is Rutledge, who still carries the voice of Hamish, the dead Scottish soldier in his head.
This is 10th book from the mother/son team of Charles Todd, nine of which feature Inspector Rutledge and the ghost of Hamish, who is a fixture in the mind of Rutledge ever since he was forced to execute Hamish for cowardice in the middle of a raging battle in France. This is a special literary device and it works because Todd doesn't overuse it. There is something in me that does not wish to see Rutledge heal to the point where Hamish disappears. By now they seem to be two necessary halves of a whole. And this is another great entry in the continuing saga.
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dissapointing
Rating (3)
Date: 2008-06-01
I finally get a book from Amazon that they packed properly so that it isn't destroyed on the way here. however. this book just lacks something I think the previous books had and I cannot put my finger on it.. I think it might be I did not give a darn about the victims . you may like it but buy it used so you won't risk paying full price for one that somehow doesn't quite come together.The setting is wonderful.
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A Pale Horse
Rating (3)
Date: 2008-05-14
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
Charles Todd's Ian Rutledge, a man who is literally and figuratively haunted by his experiences in the first world war, remains an appealing hero. However, as the Inspector Rutledge series lengthens, several basic elements of the stories really need to find some resolution.
In "A Pale Horse," the Scotland Yard inspector is charged with determining, on behalf of the army, the whereabouts of a mysterious man named Partridge who lives in an isolated cluster of cottages near the famous White Horse--an outline carved into the chalk hillside in prehistoric times. He returns to London, only to be sent to assist the local police in a death in Yorkshire. Is the dead man in Yorkshire connected with the missing man in Tomlin? No prize for giving the correct answer. And certainly coincidences are aplenty here, oppressively so.
The first section of the novel is chiefly devoted to the story of the obsessively vindictive Inspector with whom Rutledge deals in Yorkshire. This portion is never satisfactorily joined to the main action of the book, which centers on the area near the white horse and the village of Tomlin. A subplot involving Rutledge's sister Frances moves fitfully through the work (involving yet another coincidence), only to be dealt with in a very cursory fashion at the end. A female character who has figured in another Rutledge novel makes a few brief and enigmatic appearances in this one. Perhaps these latter issues will be dealt with further in a subsequent series entry, but when this happens too frequently, it doesn't so much interest the reader in reading the future novel, as much as make him or her irritated at the present one. The book rolls on to its conclusion without particularly drawing us in to care very much about any of the characters, with the exception perhaps of the Tomlin blacksmith Andrew Slater, who is nicely fleshed out.
The single biggest problem in the series as it stands is Rutledge's relationship with his personal ghost, Hamish, the spirit of a man Rutledge was compelled to execute by firing squad during World War I. Hamish functions as scourge, advisor, and, on occasion, companion. Todd has developed this mechanism very thoughtfully, but it is beginning to wear thin. I feel like strangling Hamish myself. Will Rutledge ever be able to exorcise Hamish? Will Todd choose to open up the novels by resolving this issue and taking Rutledge in some new direction? I hope so.
I'd also like to see Rutledge turn the tables on his ever hostile supervisor. Bowles's enmity is growing tired as a device for maintaining Rutledge's status quo.
If you already are a Rutledge fan, "A Pale Horse" offers the usual very good entertainment of the atmosphere of post-world-war England, nice local color, good page-to-page writing, and an engaging hero. But if you haven't read any of the series before, I'd go back and start at the beginning. The early novels have a freshness and an inspiration this one lacks.
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"Like the pale horse of the Apocalypse, on his back rode Death"
Rating  (4)
Date: 2008-04-13
11 out of 11 customers found this reveiw helpful
This slow-paced mystery is set in early twentieth century England. The protagonist is Inspector Ian Rutledge of Scotland Yard, a man haunted by the ghost of a soldier named Hamish MacLeod, whose voice is his constant companion, conscience and advisor within his head.
The story begins with a group of schoolboys experimenting with alchemy by moonlight in the ruins of an abandoned Abbey. To their horror, they discover that they have apparently raised the devil himself, and swearing each other to secrecy, they run off into the night. The next morning, the body of an unidentified man is discovered in the ruins, dressed in a hooded cloak and gas mask, and next to his foot is a book on alchemy, property of the schoolmaster Albert Crowell.
Thus begins a long investigation into the identity of the dead man, the interrogation of the schoolmaster as a murder suspect, a couple of false trails, and the uncovering of a big cover-up by the British War Office. Along the way, sub-stories relate the circumstances leading to the death of Hamish and also the love life of the Inspector's sister Frances.
The trail takes Rutledge to a group of tiny houses in Berkshire, his job being to observe a man named Gaylord Partridge. The tourist attraction in the area is a huge figure of a horse, cut into the chalk in prehistoric times, and preserved in perpetuity galloping tirelessly along the hillside. Under the pretext of doing some horsing around on the cliffs, Rutledge learns that Partridge has disappeared, as he has been known to do on occasion, and that the occupants of the cottages all have secrets they'd rather keep hidden.
Amidst conflicts with the War Office, his own office politics and local law enforcement, Rutledge painstakingly pecks away at the armor of the residents of the Tomlin Cottages, and things start heating up both literally and figuratively when arson and murder go hand in hand.
A solid read, except for a few questionable plot contrivances, and packed with local color, this story starts off on a high note, and hastens to increase the pace as it wraps up at the end, but dallies too long in the middle for short attention spans.
Amanda Richards, April 13, 2008
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