A review by nonna7
A Fearsome Doubt by Charles Todd

5.0

This is the gap in my reading history of the Charles Todd Ian Rutledge series. It's fairly early in the series. The year is 1919. The one year armistice is coming up. Rutledge, like so many veterans, is feeling anxious. He decides to take some leave and visit friends who live in a quiet Kent County town. Before he leaves, he is stopped by the widow of a man who he investigated for a series of murders. The man was convicted and hung, but his widow claims that she has new evidence. He promises to help her, but her plea causes him to feel guilty. He's worried that he was wrong about the case which he took over from another detective. While he is on leave, he attends a Guy Fawkes Day celebration and sees a face of a soldier who he thought was dead. We learn later it's the face of a German officer. When he comes back from his leave, he is sent back almost immediately to help solve a series of murders of veterans of the Great War. The men came back not only wounded in body but also in spirit. Rutledge is still suffering from his time as a officer. We learn a lot about his state of mind a year after the war has ended as well as how things actually ended for him, almost a story in itself. It's really outstanding.