Charles Todd - A Fine Summer's Day [Kindle azw3]

Our old friend Ian Rutledge is a bit at sixes-and-sevens that beautiful summer of 1914. He's just become engaged to the spoiled daughter of an Army officer, who the reader knows from previous books jilts him during his time in the Army. (One of the nice things about writing a review of a prequel is that there are very few "spoilers"!) He's risen to the rank of Inspector at Scotland Yard and runs around in very cool car. But, he's also just tragically lost his parents in a ferry accident and lives with his younger sister. He doesn't get along with his immediate superior at the Yard and there is the uncertainty of war as the "cooler heads" of diplomats and rulers do all the wrong things after the assassination in Sarajevo in June and war is declared in August.

Scotland Yard is asked to assist in a murder investigation of a man found hung in his house. The man has lived a blameless life and local authorities cannot understand why he would either be murdered or commit suicide. Several other men around southern England are also found dead with a glass of milk containing laudanum near their bodies. Suddenly Rutledge's investigation of one murder spirals into investigations of other suspected murders. He motors around southern England - the authors have helpfully included a map of England in the front of the book - and gets an "idea" about the murders that is not found acceptable in Scotland Yard. Between times on the road, Rutledge is also in London, attempting to placate his spoiled fiance, Jean Gordon.

The Todd's book is just a grand story of life and crime and ultimate justice in that summer of 1914. The novel also includes characters from the other Todd series, "Bess Crawford". I've been waiting for the two series to intersect and in "A Fine Summer's Day" they begin to do just that.