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"Seamless in its storytelling and enthralling in its plotting." --Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel "Dark and remarkable....Once [Todd] grabs you, there's no putting the novel down." --Detroit Free Press The Winston-Salem Journal declares that, "like P. D. James and Ruth Rendell, Charles Todd writes novels that transcend genre." A Long Shadow proves that statement true beyond the shadow of a doubt. Once again featuring Todd's extraordinary protagonist, Scotland Yard investigator and shell-shocked World War One veteran, Inspector Ian Rutledge, A Long Shadow immerses readers in the sights and sounds of post-war Great Britain, as the damaged policeman pursues answers to a constable's slaying and the three-year-old mystery of a young girl's disappearance in a tiny Northamptonshire village. Read Todd's A Long Shadow and see why the Washington Post calls the Rutledge crime novels, "one of the best historical series being written today."… (more)
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Ian Rutledge is a police inspector from Scotland Yard who has recently returned from fighting in the trenches in France during World War I. While he struggles to recover
In this book, he investigates a case in a remote village of a man (the local sheriff) found barely alive, shot in the back with an arrow in the nearby woods thought to be haunted by ancient Saxon ghosts. Looking into the attempted assassination, Rutledge is drawn to an unsolved mystery involving the disappearance of a teenage beauty. While the cases may or may not be related, there are common factors, and in a small town, most events are related. During the investigation of the case, he confronts local prejudice and tries to maintain his sanity in spite of the constant chiding of his ever-present companion Hamish (the ghost of a fellow soldier he had to execute for refusing to fight or the manifestation of his guilt for the lives lost under his command).
The book is well-written and the descriptions evocative of a bleak yet slowly recovering country. Before reading the book, I was wary of the fact that one of the main characters is either a ghost or symptom of the detective's imagination; however, the supernatural was not overdone. The writing was done in a manner so that I could understand how his conscience and shell-shocked hallucinations were a reaction to his war experience, and that made his trauma and struggle to recover all the more palpable for me as a reader.
The mystery wasn't difficult to figure out, from fairly early in the book. But the story remained interesting and suspenseful not because everyone was a suspect but because there was a question of whether Rutledge would survive / maintain control long enough to solve the case. Starting in London and throughout the investigation, Rutledge's condition is made worse by a stalker who shadows and terrorizes him by leaving tokens demonstrating that Rutledge is vulnerable anywhere at any time.
The book is not gruesome--in fact, there is very little description of blood or gore. However, the book left me more emotionally drained than many violent stories do. I want to read another (and plan to do so) but not for a while.
Or do the attempts on his life and shell casing mean something else instead? Is he being warned away from discovering the body of a missing teenage girl in Dudlington? And who was responsible for the rector's fall and shooting Constable Henley in the back with a poisoned arrow? With close-mouthed villagers and an evil presence in the nearby woods, there are long shadows indeed dogging Inspector Rutledge's every step as he tries to make sense of the plots, mysteries and secrets he's only starting to uncover.
This time, Old Bowels sends Rutledge to a small rural village (as ever) in Northamptonshire, on what could be a case with professional implications for Rutledge's superior. The local bobby has been shot with a bow and arrow in a haunted forest, and the locals think there might be a connection with the disappearance of a young girl, Emma Mason. Is Emma buried in the forest, and did the constable have anything to do with her death? To tangle the web still further, a soldier with a grudge seems to be stalking Rutledge, taking potshots and leaving empty gun shells behind, and a mysterious woman with almost psychic empathy has also latched onto the already beleaguered policeman. Who can Rutledge trust? The paranoia and creeping fear in this novel is almost palpable, with shadows in the night and everybody under suspicion.
I found the plot to be rather convoluted, but compelling all the same. The murderer has one too many crimes heaped upon their head in the final chapters, making the final revelation rather silly, but the mix-up of crimes and relationships kept me guessing. And apart from 'drapes', 'walks' and 'sweaters', the narrative and dialogue remain fitting to time and place - recognisably post-war England.