The Confession

by Charles Todd

After 419 I had to read something I knew I would enjoy so I have returned to one of my favourite mystery authors.

This is another of the stories about Inpsector Rutledge, an Inspector with Scotland Yard who is suffering post traumatic stress as a result of his experiences in WWI.

Rutledge is approached by a young man who is dying.  The man claims that he murdered another man in 1915 and he wants to confess before he dies.  Rutledge doesn't arrest the man but goes to the village the man is from to see what he can find out.  He is given a very hostile reception by all the townspeople.  What are they hiding. 

A few days later the young man is found dead in the river, he had been shot in the back of the head.  Rutledge finds out that the young man is not who he claimed to be, he is another person from the same village.

As Rutledge tries to figure out why the young man would lie about his identify and confess to a murder, when there is no evidence that the person named has been murdered, he learns about a mother who has disappeared years before, without a trace, leaving her son and two young people she had taken into her care, all alone.   The family home has been abandoned.

Rutledge than learns that the parents of the young man the women "adopted" were violently murdered and the young boy was also attacked at the time but survived.  Rutledge learns that the imposter was writing novels about the town which could upset people in the town and two of the people he would like to interview in regards to the supposed murder (including the alleged victim) are reported as deserters by the military.  Many of the young men seem to have affection for the young women who was "adopted".  Could jealousy have driven one of the young men to murder?

Rutledge has to place a false story, about the death of one of the key characters, to get to information that leads him closer ot the truth.  It is only because of thorough police work investigating the murders of the young boys famuly that Rutledge is able to figure out the truth.  The murderer is a person he would never have suspected, nor any of the villagers.  It turns out a young man, who thinks he is the son/heir of the first murdered man (the "young boy's" father) has been exacting revenge for his perceived ill fortune slowly and methodically.

As always, these books are filled with interesting characters, and many twists and turns.  However, there were so many young men of a similar age involved in this that I had trouble keeping them all straight. The authors (a mother and son duo writing under the pend name) do a great job of depicting England after WWI.  Interestingly, Hamish, the ghost of a dead soldier who haunts Rutledge, doesn't have too much to say in this story.