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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Sloppy plot, subpar for series, May 29, 2008
I have read all of Charles Todd's Ian Rutledge mysteries up to this book, and was a bit disappointed. Besides getting quite tired of Hamish (get some professional help, already, Ian!), the plot is so muddled that even at the end I wasn't quite sure what was done to whom and why. Without being a spoiler, all I can say about the motive of the murderer is.... WHAT??? It's the thinnest excuse for murder I've ever read and almost completely unbelievable. Still, if only to keep up what's going on with Rutledge, this book is worth reading; I just hope the next one is better.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Same old, same old, December 1, 2010
This is the eighth adventure of Ian Rutledge, a "shell-shocked" World War I veteran, back at his pre-war job at Scotland Yard, investigating and solving murders. (The books take place in 1919.) Ian is also haunted - literally- by the ghost of a Scottish soldier who reported to him during his time in the trenches. Hamish - said ghost - is not just an ephemeral lurking presence but a constant character. After eight books, Hamish has become more than tiresome; he's aggravating, much a like a neighbor's barking dog. In addition this series has become both stale and repetitive.
The authors - I use the plural, as Charles Todd is actually a mother/son duo - follow a very similar outline for each of the Rutledge books. Although Ian is based in London, he spends little time there. His superior, a one dimensional bureaucrat and blowhard, assigns Rutledge to cases out in the English countryside. This is perfectly fine with the loner Ian, who hops into his "motor-car" and travels to some distant small village or hamlet to solve a murder.
When Ian reaches his destination he is always greeted with suspicion by the small-town folk, he drinks copious amounts of tea and sleeps little; he encounters a very obvious red-herring, i.e. a member of the community who must be guilty except he or she is not because that would be too obvious and there is always a woman - usually a young widow - who kindles a romantic spark within Ian. Rutledge always solves the case just before he can truly fall in love and just in time for his superior to assign him to another case in another remote location.
And oh yeah, there's always Hamish the Obnoxious Ghost, yammering in his impenetrable Scottish burr in the not so distant background.
A Long Shadow follows this template. It differs from its predecessors in that the solution of the case - actually cases - is incredibly weak, particularly the identity of the murderer. Also Rutledge has attracted a stalker in this book, the point of which I missed.
I was drawn to this series because it has all the earmarks I usually enjoy. Unfortunately to say the Rutledge books are similar is an understatement. They're all the same book. If you've read one, you've read them all.
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
What?, December 17, 2009
After reading A Cold Treachery and liking it, I was surprised at how much I disliked this one. Maybe here we begin to see the perils of having a "team" write mysteries? Maybe mom and son forget who's supposed to take care of which detail.
There are two story lines here: Rutledge being stalked and the crime(s) in Dudlington that sent Rutledge there. The second was somewhat dealt with, but the first was left hanging with little explained about the stalker's methods and his ability to pull off his stalking. [SPOILER] In the final stalking scene, are we to believe that the stalker just waited by the side of the (which? any?) road waiting for Ian to come along--was he out there 24/7 in the cold?
At one point, Rutledge likens his view to that "from an airplane." Given the time frame, we can probably assume he had never been in a plane (which probably should have been called an "aeroplane" in those days). One can almost picture him logged on to Google Earth, circling over Dudlington.
The author is good, as I've noted in previous reviews, at creating a picture of a locale. Unfortunately, in this case, that's about all there is. The crimes in Dudlington make little sense, particularly the motive. The connection to a London crime and to Scotland Yard's officials was convoluted, to say the least. The relationship of Rutledge and his new female friend was not believable and was too quickly intimate (although not physical).
The edition I read has a dust jacket with a lovely atmospheric photo of a ruined abbey. Great! But there is no ruined abbey in the book. I realize the author has little control over the cover, but I wonder what the publisher was aiming for here?
I found the book very slow-going and kept wanting to scream "just get on with it!" Maybe such an investigation does take this long, this much driving back and forth, this much discussion over and over; I just didn't want to sit through it. Although Hamish didn't especially annoy me in the other Rutledge books I've read, he drove me crazy here. Instead of just being a voice inside Ian's head, now we've got him sitting in the back seat of the car, getting in Ian's way on a rung of a ladder, Ian worrying about Hamish being shot, etc. Yikes! Several other things, primarily editing problems, annoyed me as well. Think I'll lay off "Charles Todd" for a while.
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