A Test of Wills Audiobook

Quotes

• “You’re going to love Todd.”

  — Stephen King

• “A first novel that speaks out, urgently and compassionately, for a long-dead generation…Both a meticulously wrought puzzle and a harrowing psychological drama.”

  — New York Times Book Review

• “The emotional and physical carnage of World War I is used to remarkable effect in A Test of Wills, an excellent new mystery and, one hopes, the first of a series.”

  — Chicago Tribune

• “Remarkable…Todd, an American, seems to have perfect pitch in his ability to capture the tenor and nuances of English country life.”

  — Kansas City Star

• “More than an ordinary whodunit, this literate thriller raises disturbing issues of war and peace.”

  — San Diego Union-Tribune

• “Finely crafted…psychologically sophisticated, tautly written, and craftily plotted.”

  — San Jose Mercury News

• “Expert plotting and keen insight into the human psyche [are] hallmarks of this series.”

  — Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel

• “A newcomer returns us to the essential pleasure of the well-crafted puzzle in this debut, the absorbing story of a young British WWI veteran returning from the war to his job as a Scotland Yard inspector…Todd depicts the outer and inner worlds of his characters with authority and sympathy as he closes in on his surprising—and convincing—conclusion.”

  — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

• “Strong, elegant prose, detailed surroundings, and sound plotting characterize the debut historical…highly recommended.”

  — Library Journal

• “The twentieth century hasn’t happened in Upper Streetham, which seems to have been cast out of Rebecca, or in first-novelist Todd’s deeply old-fashioned storytelling, which eschews the slightest impropriety in favor of the patient subtlety and circumlocution that held readers in thrall seventy years ago. A feast for the like-minded.”

  — Kirkus Reviews

• “In A Test of Wills, Charles Todd gives us a golden age crime story in its proper historical setting. This is an intelligent, controlled, and well-organized first novel, rich with promise of a bright future.”

  — Reginald Hill, author of The Woodcutter

• “War-wounded Britain in 1919 is beautifully conveyed in an intricately plotted mystery. With this remarkable debut, Charles Todd breaks new ground in the historical crime novel.”

  — Peter Lovesey, author of Skeleton Hill

• “The debut of Charles Todd’s Inspector Ian Rutledge is an auspicious one. In a novel full of complex and believable characters, perhaps the most complex of all the Great War itself, which backlights this mystery with its monumental horrors.”

  — Gaylord Dold, author of The Last Man in Berlin