The Black Ascot

An ex-convict's cryptic tip points Inspector Ian Rutledge toward a man who has evaded Scotland Yard for a decade: Alan Barrington, suspected in a murder during Black Ascot, the 1910 royal horse race held in mourning for Edward VII. What should be a quiet cold-case review becomes something far more treacherous as Rutledge reconstructs Barrington's life and begins to suspect he is being watched. Book twenty-one of the Inspector Rutledge series melds historical atmosphere with the psychological complexity that defines the character.

Simon Prebble has narrated the series with consistent excellence, his delivery of Rutledge balancing the character's shell-shocked fragility against his dogged professional integrity. The Edwardian setting and the cold-case structure give the story a particular elegiac quality that Prebble honors without sentimentality. At just under eleven hours, The Black Ascot is one of the more atmospheric entries in an atmospheric series, rich in period detail and genuinely suspenseful in its final movement.