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A review by cleheny
A Cold Treachery by Charles Todd
3.0
I purchased this book in a Kindle sale, believing that I had read it before, but I think I confused the title with an earlier Rutledge mystery. I enjoyed it, though I'm not sure I'd seek out other Rutledge mysteries if this was the only one I'd read.
Here, Rutledge is sent north to the Lake Country, to a small village that has just been shocked by the brutal murder of a young family, and the oldest child has gone missing during a freak snowstorm. Rutledge faces the familiar challenge of trying to tease out the truth from locals who don't want to share secrets or imagine a killer in their midst. The pace of this mystery is slow, and I think that's because Rutledge is thrust into a largely sedentary role. He arrives at least 3-4 days after the murders, during a storm, and after the locals have been searching for the missing boy for a couple of days. He can't go with the searchers because he doesn't know the land and will be more of a hindrance than a help in the snow. Instead, he is forced to remain in the village, getting reports and trying to tease apart the truth from the lies, as he repeatedly talks to the same few people. Even his excursions from the village have a repetitive quality.
It's not an unrealistic course of action, given the setup, but it becomes a bit tedious. The claustraphobic feeling that Rutledge feels in the valley is mirrored in the narrow set of characters and locations that he visits.
I also found the reveal a bit frustrating. The killer isn't obvious, and I'm glad of that, but the motive isn't clear, either. There's a crucial dynamic between the killer and a victim that is critical to the plot but is never explained. Certain things can be inferred, of course, but it's a bit frustrating, particularly when, after Rutledge discovers who the killer is, and he thinks that another investigator, "digging into the past," would have found something out. But there's no indication of what was in the killer's past that would have revealed his culpability. It's not a cheap resolution to the mystery, just an incomplete one.
Here, Rutledge is sent north to the Lake Country, to a small village that has just been shocked by the brutal murder of a young family, and the oldest child has gone missing during a freak snowstorm. Rutledge faces the familiar challenge of trying to tease out the truth from locals who don't want to share secrets or imagine a killer in their midst. The pace of this mystery is slow, and I think that's because Rutledge is thrust into a largely sedentary role. He arrives at least 3-4 days after the murders, during a storm, and after the locals have been searching for the missing boy for a couple of days. He can't go with the searchers because he doesn't know the land and will be more of a hindrance than a help in the snow. Instead, he is forced to remain in the village, getting reports and trying to tease apart the truth from the lies, as he repeatedly talks to the same few people. Even his excursions from the village have a repetitive quality.
It's not an unrealistic course of action, given the setup, but it becomes a bit tedious. The claustraphobic feeling that Rutledge feels in the valley is mirrored in the narrow set of characters and locations that he visits.
I also found the reveal a bit frustrating. The killer isn't obvious, and I'm glad of that, but the motive isn't clear, either. There's a crucial dynamic between the killer and a victim that is critical to the plot but is never explained. Certain things can be inferred, of course, but it's a bit frustrating, particularly when, after Rutledge discovers who the killer is, and he thinks that another investigator, "digging into the past," would have found something out. But there's no indication of what was in the killer's past that would have revealed his culpability. It's not a cheap resolution to the mystery, just an incomplete one.