Will I love A Test of Wills?

I love a good detective series. I love even more a good detective series that takes place in the UK and has at its center a flawed detective. Set the series in or around WWI, and that’s about as perfect as it can get for me.

This is the first of twenty-four Ian Rutledge mysteries, so it started me on many hours of happy reading. Inspector Ian Rutledge of Scotland Yard is shell-shocked from WWI. His wife Jean leaves him when he returns from the war after five years, and Rutledge is lonely and barely holding on when he is… show more.

I chose this series, not because of the fun crimes Scotland Yard Inspector Rutledge solves, but because he is a soldier from WWI who battles PTSD. He experiences some of the symptoms other soldiers had, or have, following a traumatic war experience. His dead corporal constantly pesters him throughout the series by being a voice in his head. Additionally, after his fiancée leaves him following the war, he has intimacy issues and cannot express his feelings for the woman he loves. To cope with his sleeplessness and PTSD, he immerses himself in the cases he’s assigned. This series, in part,… show more.