My reading is more or less divided into two camps: stretching and escape. Most of my nonfiction is of the stretching variety, magazines and books I read to learn and to encourage ideas.

My fiction tends to be of the escape variety. Recently I’ve discovered a detective series that suits my kind of escape reading. It’s Charles Todd’s Ian Rutledge novels. Rutledge is a detective from Scotland Yard, well beloved locale of many British novels.

Rutledge, however, is a wounded hero. He suffered trauma during World War I as a commanding officer for four years. In his imagination, he carries on conversations with one of the men, Hamish, a Scottish soldier Rutledge sent to his death for disobeying orders during the terrible Battle of the Somme.

Seeking to recover from what we now call post traumatic stress disorder—as well as he could recover—Rutledge suffered a broken engagement.

His investigative work is his salvation. He struggles to quiet Hamish’s sometimes accusing voice; yet Hamish provides a foil against which Rutledge can bounce off his theories as he attempts to solve complicated crimes.

Though grim deaths are a part of the plot, violence is not glorified, nor is sensuality.

I enjoy the fight for survival the hero makes, the cynical comments that are honest but not overwhelming, and especially the small lives of villagers and ordinary characters drawn well by the author.

The series is my kind of fiction: realistic, yet not drowning me in despair. Occasional kindness. An imperfect hero, yet with high standards. Bringing me out of my everyday world, but not, as my mother would say, leaving me with a bad taste in my mouth. Enough hope that I check out the next one.