A MATTER OF JUSTICE

Narrator Simon Prebble is an able coconspirator is this, the eleventh in Charles Todd's historical mysteries about WWI veteran and Scotland Yard Inspector Ian Rutledge. In this captivating addition to the series, Rutledge searches for the person who killed Harold Quarles, a successful London businessman who died while relaxing at his country estate. Everyone, including Quarles's wife, has reason to dislike, even hate, the man. But murder? The answers may lie in battlefield crimes that Quarles committed in the Boer War. Prebble has a fine command of our sympathetic protagonist, but the special pleasures of the narration come in his enlivening renditions of everyone from a teenage Welsh girl to a rough Yorkshireman. Also, his ability to render emotion without excessive drama is exemplary. Do listen. A.C.S. © AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine [Published: APRIL 2009]