Charles Todd is actually two people: the actual Charles Todd, and his mom Caroline. (Note to self: remind my son to write stories with me when he grows up). Their big character is Inspector Ian Rutledge, a copper who is suffering from PTSD (from WWI), who hears the voice of a soldier he was forced to kill in his head. The voice is in his head, not the soldier.
Once again, Amazon had a Kindle deal on this particular book, so I picked up on #14 (#1 will come later). The titular confession comes from a terminally ill man who comes into Scotland Yard in 1920 to report a murder. The man is dying, and he needs to clear his conscience of a murder he committed five years before. Then before Inspector Rutledge can make much of a start on his investigation, the confessor turns up dead – not from cancer, but from a shot to the head. Rutledge doesn’t have much to go on, but he begins looking into both murders.
Rutledge heads to a strange little village in Essex, where the folks aren’t exactly friendly with outsiders. So he does what any normal investigator would do: he brings his sister on a drive to check out the village. They also check out an abandoned manor house called River’s Edge, which is super creepy, but maybe not as creepy as the village.
Along the way, Hamish McLeod (the soldier in Rutledge’s head) taunts him, but also helps Rutledge see things more clearly. The murders are solved, with a few others thrown in, and maybe some other crimes are solved as well.
This book was good enough to send me back to #1, and I’ll work my way through these as well.
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