Scotland Yard Inspector Ian Rutledge lands in a small town when a love triangle turns deadly in the ninth of the series. The mother-son team (Caroline and Charles Todd) live in Delaware and North Carolina.-Ann Kim (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

The complex, evocative ninth installment in Todd's series set in post-WWI England (after 2006's Long Shadow) showcases the pseudonymous author's usual subtle understatement and deft characterization. Scotland Yard Inspector Ian Rutledge, who has returned from the trench warfare of France haunted by the carnage (and in particular by his order to execute one of his own men), heads to the seaside village of Hampton Regis to defuse a hostage situation. Stephen Mallory, who served under Rutledge's command in the war and is suspected of viciously assaulting his ex-lover's husband, demands Rutledge's presence before he will release his ex-lover and other hostages. To manage the crisis, Rutledge must weather the suspicions of the local police and identify the person responsible for the assault and two subsequent murders. Todd, a mother-and-son writing team, seamlessly melds a fair-play whodunit with psychological suspense in the tradition of P.D. James's best. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

DON'T ask me how it happened, but a gang of great old guys nearly hijacked the American crime novel last year. I'm thinking of lone avengers like Michael Connelly's aging homicide detective, Harry Bosch, bringing belated justice to a cold case he might have botched in "Echo Park," as well as precinct-house saints like the Oracle, wising up the rookie cops in Joseph Wambaugh's "Hollywood Station." And how about those old lions who came roaring out of retirement in new novels by George Pelecanos and John Lutz? But no matter how vital its old guard, the crime novel always needs fresh blood, so it's gratifying to find a few promising writers tooling up to give the genre its next generation of heroes. These raw recruits may be younger and dumber, but they're no less driven. And if Theresa Schwegel's PROBABLE CAUSE (St. Martin's Minotaur, $23.95) is anything to go by, they're also more self-absorbed and anxious, more alienated from a criminal justice system that demands their loyalty but betrays their trust. In her first novel, "Officer Down," Schwegel got inside the head of a female cop who earns her independence the hard way when she's suspected of killing her partner. "Probable Cause" returns to this dark theme with its coming-of-age story about a third-generation Chicago police officer, 23-year-old Ray Weiss, who is ostracized by his fellow officers when he balks at participating in their shady deals with local merchants. Against his better judgment, Ray goes along with a rookie initiation rite that has him pocketing some rings from a phony jewelry-store robbery. But when the shop owner is murdered and Ray's field training officer bullies him into making a false arrest, the kid rebels. Schwegel has no trouble winning sympathy for Ray, whose awed love for his emotionally distant father and idealistic faith in the honor of his job make him sweet as well as vulnerable. And while Schwegel skillfully tightens the plot screws that force Ray to develop his own code of ethics, she also has fun riding with the cops through the best and worst of Chicago's neighborhoods. But there are plenty of ouch! moments in her writing ("the air in the room is as still as a dead man"), and the older her characters, the stiffer their dialogue. While Ray's personal appeal is enough to get us over these narrative humps, it would be nice to see more of his hard-won maturity next time out. Marcus Sakey works the same Chicago territory in his flashy first novel, THE BLADE ITSELF (St. Martin's Minotaur, $22.95), but from the other side of the law. His protagonist, Danny Carter, is a reformed thief who considers himself blessed because he holds down a responsible managerial position with a contracting outfit and lives with a woman who loves him. But seven years ago, Danny ran out on Evan McGann, his boyhood friend and partner in crime, during a pawnshop robbery that turned ugly when Evan "exploded" and shot the owner. Now Evan is out of prison and demanding payback by blackmailing Danny into kidnapping his boss's 12-year-old son. The narrative drive of this white-knuckle story owes everything to the raw tension between virtuous Danny and evil Evan, whose violent rages make him "a force of nature." But once Danny caves in to Evan's threats, the plot follows a familiar pattern. It's obvious that Evan is going to roll over Danny's efforts to control events and that Danny's ultimate triumph will be a way of proving himself to his disapproving father. It's also a given that there will be a lot of talk about growing up poor and Irish in a blue-collar neighborhood "that belonged to them less every day." But even if we've already read this in a Dennis Lehane novel, Sakey pulls it off by virtue of his cool, commanding style. He's already found his voice. Now he needs to expand his vision. Four years after the 1916 Somme offensive, the battle still rages in Ian Rutledge's head. Haunted by his wartime experiences, the Scotland Yard detective returns in A FALSE MIRROR (Morrow/HarperCollins, $23.95), the ninth novel in a remarkable series by an American mother/son team who write under the name of Charles Todd. Like all Rutledge's cases, a brutal assault in the coastal town of Hampton Regis can be traced back to the war. The victim, Matthew Hamilton, served in the Foreign Office and his presumed assailant, Stephen Mallory, was engaged to Hamilton's wife before they were separated by the war in which he was branded as a deserter. With Mallory holding Mrs. Hamilton and her maid hostage, Rutledge works his way through the village, opening up old wounds and reliving his own painful memories. The sad and shocking resolution only confirms Todd's thesis that war destroys minds and souls as well as bodies, and that the suffering never ends - not even for the so-called winners. War is also very much on the mind of Martha Grimes, another American author who sets her mysteries in England. Before the plot takes some dizzying turns, DUST (Viking, $25.95) appears to be yet another enchanting entertainment for devotees of Grimes's Scotland Yard detective, Richard Jury, and his irrepressible friend, Melrose Plant. When Billy Maples, a young philanthropist from a moneyed family, is found murdered in a boutique hotel on the Clerkenwell Road, Jury wonders if it has anything to do with Maples's docent duties at Lamb House, the historic residence in Rye where Henry James wrote much of his later work. Dispatching Plant to Rye, where he develops hilarious literary affectations, Jury focuses his attention on Maples's grandfather, one of the code-breakers based at Bletchley Park during World War II. While the war stories are sensitively drawn, they are trivialized by the lighter comic tone of the storytelling. Henry James would not approve. Theresa Schwegel Schwegel's new novel is a coming-of-age story featuring a 23-year-old third-generation Chicago cop.

The heartbreaking aftermath of choosing either side in the fight-or-flight dilemma. Stephen Mallory, once a soldier under Ian Rutledge's command at the Somme, seeks out Rutledge, now with Scotland Yard, then pleads to assaulting Matthew Hamilton and holding the man's wife, Felicity, and maid, Nan, hostage at gunpoint. Rutledge subsequently heads to the English town of Hampton Regis with Hamish MacLeod, the wartime ghost he can't shake (A Long Shadow, 2006, etc.). The villagers believe Mallory wants Hamilton dead so he can reclaim Felicity, who didn't wait for Mallory to return from the war. This scenario, which reminds Rutledge of his own wartime abandonment, is fostered by his dislike of the cowardly Mallory. While Hamilton lies comatose, Rutledge wonders who else might have attacked Hamilton: a solicitor who fiddled with Hamilton's inheritance while he was stationed in Malta; a foreign service officer Hamilton may have pilloried in his diary; a long-unseen woman whose memory haunts him (but why?); and another woman who might want revenge for his striking her down in a car accident. None of them, however, seem to have any reason for the ensuing deaths of the doctor's wife and Hamilton's gossipy maid. Clues that would do Agatha Christie proud inexorably lead to the dnouement, but Todd's fans will know better than to expect a happy ending. Compelling evidence that inside every warrior who returns from the front, there's a nightmare waiting to break out. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Motive, motive, motive. Is it jealousy? Money? Or something entirely different? Scotland Yard Inspector Rutledge must find the answer when he's summoned to the small town of Hampton Regis at the behest of Stephen Mallory, accused of viciously attacking one Matthew Hamilton. Afraid of being railroaded for a crime he insists he didn't commit, Mallory holds Hamilton's wife and her housekeeper hostage, hoping Rutledge can prove his innocence. It's tough going for Rutledge, who is dogged by unpleasant memories of Mallory, whom he knew while soldiering in the Great War, and by the echoing voice of Hamish, also a fellow soldier, whose imagined counsel steadies the investigator as\b he casts about for suspects. Todd, the pseudonym of a mother-son writing team, incorporates touches of both Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie in this character-driven mystery, which builds smoothly but not simply to a climax that is likely to be a genuine surprise. --Stephanie Zvirin Copyright 2006 Booklist