With both the Inspector Ian Rutledge and Bess Crawford series, Charles Todd has cornered the market on World War I-era mystery stories. A FINE SUMMER'S DAY takes the mother-and-son writing team of Charles and Caroline Todd somewhere they have never gone before --- setting a story before the start of World War I.

This prequel allows readers to see an Ian Rutledge who appears somewhat unfamiliar. He is not hardened on life or shell-shocked from the brutalities of war. He has a strong sense of justice and believes that catching those who kill is a far more noble profession than taking the lives of others in the military.

"A FINE SUMMER'S DAY is an absolute pleasure to read and a true treat for faithful readers of this series. We get to see inside the mind and emotional state of the trusty Ian Rutledge, and he ends up coming across as more human in the process. A fine prequel, indeed!"

The novel opens, ironically, exactly one month prior to the start of the war. Even though word about the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand by a group of assassins has reached the UK, it still seems far enough away to keep them insulated from any of the fallout. Rutledge is trying to move up the ranks within Scotland Yard and please his crotchety old superior, Chief Superintendent Bowles.

Rutledge is engaged to young Jean Gordon, a fact that does not necessarily please his friends and family. Her father is a career military man, which foretells a confrontation that will arise once England is pulled into the war. Meanwhile, Rutledge is sent to investigate a death in the town of Moresby that looks to be a suicide.

While there, Rutledge learns of another random death in a farmhouse with the victim found impaled on a pitchfork. Upon further inspection, he believes these to be acts of murder and not suicides. He also thinks that these events, as well as a handful of other deaths he learns about, are directly related to one another in some way. When the local constable in Moresby tries to pin the death in their town on another suspect, Rutledge is up in arms. To complicate matters further, Bowles is putting pressure on Rutledge to take all these cases on face value and move on.

Rutledge defiantly keeps on with his investigation and finally finds the link to the victims. It seems they all may have been involved in a court case --- as jury members, barristers or the judge --- and the murderer must be a disgruntled family member of the accused defendant who was sentenced to death. Rutledge knows he is on his own and seems to be the only one capable of realizing that sometimes there are secrets, hidden depths that no one sees behind the surface of kindness and generosity.

Rutledge is being pressured into stopping the investigation, and his fiancée wants him to join the war effort and enlist. This causes him to question his own motives in relentlessly pursuing the killer. Was it the excitement of the chase, of outsmarting the culprit, rather than his concern for the victims who no longer have a voice? Once his own sister, Frances, is threatened by the murderer, Rutledge recognizes that he must make a difficult choice or risk losing everyone he loves in the process.

A FINE SUMMER'S DAY is an absolute pleasure to read and a true treat for faithful readers of this series. We get to see inside the mind and emotional state of the trusty Ian Rutledge, and he ends up coming across as more human in the process. A fine prequel, indeed!