Charles Todd is the pen name used by the American mother-and-son writing team Charles and Caroline Todd, best known for atmospheric historical mysteries set in Britain during and after the First World War. Their fiction combines carefully constructed murder investigations with the psychological and social consequences of wartime service. The partnership became particularly associated with its convincing British settings, restrained characterisation and recurring interest in grief, trauma, duty and the gulf separating former soldiers from civilians. Caroline Todd died in 2021, after which Charles continued writing under the established name.
Their principal creation is Scotland Yard detective Inspector Ian Rutledge, a decorated veteran who returns from the Western Front suffering from shell shock and haunted by the voice of a soldier he ordered executed. Beginning with A Test of Wills, the series follows Rutledge through murder investigations in post-war England. The Bess Crawford novels, beginning with A Duty to the Dead, feature a resourceful British army nurse whose work takes her from wartime France to investigations during the conflict and its aftermath. Todd also wrote the historical stand-alone novels The Murder Stone—published in the United States as A Cold Treachery—and The Walnut Tree, a First World War story connected with Bess Crawford’s world.