Customer Reviews

Search the Dark (Inspector Ian Rutledge Novels)

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

in this third outing, Ian Rutledge, and his conscience Hamish, are sent to Dorset to investigate a murder of a woman and the disappearance of her two children. He follows each clue only to find more questions and additional clues.

This is British procedural writing at it's best. Todd has not suffered from second or third book syndrome. His writing is precise and concise - each word chosen with care. Rutledge contunues to be a tortured soul who is a compassionate and intelligent investigator. Todd's ending surprised me, but that just makes for good reading.

If you enjoy procedurals, make sure you read this series. If you've wanted to try a procedural, but didn't know where to begin, begin with this one - all others will pale by comparison.

I loved Search the Dark, but even more, I love the long-term relationship that Charles Todd is building with his readers. I see that others are getting weary of the disembodied (literally) voice of Hamish. Not I. I think he is one of the most original inventions in recent literature and after the first few incredulous chapters, I began to accept him and wove him right into my sense of reality. Charles Todd has chosen a very dark and difficult time in world history, World War I, which is more romanticized but much less understood than the wars since. I appreciate his attention to detail and look forward very much to the next installment.

I wouldn't recommend this as an individual novel, for there are far better mysteries, not to mention books in this series by Todd. However, if you are reading the series in full, you should keep trudging through this one for the rewarding last quarter of the book.

It's really, really slow moving and dull for more than half the book, and has been noted in other reviews, comes up with a good ending that is surprising and entertaining. So I was glad I stuck with it. As I continue to work through this series, I hope I find this book is an abberation in pace.

I very much enjoy the Charles Todd mysteries. This particular book was especially good. I must admit though that the voice of the dead comrade is beginning to annoy me. I think the mysteries stand without that added twist. I think that perhaps a book that finally frees Inspector Rutledge from this particular demon is due. Otherwise, this was an excellent book with real characters and well thought out plot. I hate the cliche but it was a real "page turner" throughout.

Ian Rutledge was a top homicide detective with Scotland Yard before he went off to WWI for 'King and Country'. Like many men who spent too much time in the trenches and saw too much death and waste of men's lives; he is haunted by the ghost of a man (Hamish MacLeod) he had to shoot for cowardice.

He is sent to Singleton Magna to look for the children of another scarred veteran who may have killed them and his wife. The problem is that the wife and children were killed four years ago in a Zeppelin bombing in London.

This town is filled with men like him; Simon Wyatt, the son of the family that has supplied the last three generations of MPs; the nephew of the pub owner who is recovering from massive abdominial wounds and a broken heart, and the son of the late Church Rector who was wounded in the head in France.

Added to this group is the French wife of Wyatt, his ex-fiancee, her best friend and hired assistant to Simon, a missing parlor maid, the local inspector who is to glad to jump to any conclusion that will end this case, and the ex-fiancee's father who is an MP and former government minister.There are also all the other locals, from quiet farmers to the town busybody who all have their own ideas of who and why the murders were committed.

In addition to dealing with all these people, he is still dealing with his own demon (Hamish) who is never far below the surface; and always happy to tell Rutledge of his failings and shortcomings. If you can figure out the reason and the murderer before the denoument, your a better detective than me.

While the term PTSD is not used in this novel-- and rightfully so because it is set in the years when it was still called shell shock-- however, the manifestations of this condition are obvious and heart wrenching.

At the end of WWI when the veterans returned to England it was to find a population struggling desperately for normalcy. But the men who returned home were not the same men who left and the family and friends they returned to had borne their own share of losses.

Todd evocatively lays out the story of Ian Rutledge who has returned to his job in Scotland Yard, but finds wherever he turns more human wreckage from the War that shattered his own life and left him with an unseen companion whose distinctive voice haunts his days, a bit of his soul broken off and speaking to him in the voice of a dead man.

This novel opens with the the story of another shell shocked veteran, Mowbray, and the body of a woman who may be his wife. At least it would be convenient for the local Police officials if it were his wife. Rutledge is brought in to try to find Mowbray's two children-- it being feared that he has also killed them as well.

However all is not as it appears and the tragedy grows darker as Rutledge digs deeper into the lives of the inhabitants of the community.

This book is infused with a powerful sense of compassion. It's very well written and deals with a subject that is timely but also timeless.

Very highly recommended.

The first novels in this series about Scotland Yard homicide investigator DI Ian Rutledge (recent returnee from the trenches in France and now haunted by the voice of a Scots soldier he had executed) focused on stately homes (or at least "country houses") inhabited by gentlefolk of extended pedigree. This one is different, and probably the best of three, centering as it does on Mowbray, a desperately unemployed workingman who, like Rutledge himself, is a psychologically damaged combat veteran. Traveling through Dorset by train in hope of a job at the end of it, he looks out the window and sees a young couple with two small children -- and he is immediately convinced the woman and the children are his own wife and kids, supposedly killed in a zeppelin raid on London two or three years before. She wouldn't be the first war-wife to take the opportunity to abandon her husband and run off with another man. When he finally gets off the train and goes hunting for her, she and the kids have disappeared. And then the dead, beaten body of a young woman turns up and Mowbray is quickly arrested and jailed for murder -- and begins sliding into a complete breakdown. The Yard generally gets called in when the local cops want to avoid responsibility for political reasons, and that's generally what happens here -- but, as usual, Rutledge upsets everyone's comfortable assumptions by actually looking for the truth. The local Inspector, an unimaginative provincial, doesn't like interference on his patch. The residents of the several villages are suspicious of everyone. And Rutledge has his work cut out trying both to identify the dead woman and to locate the missing children. And, eventually, there is indeed a "stately home" involved. The author (actually an American mother/son team) does an excellent job of depicting the demons that haunt their protagonist as well as the suspect, and they also demonstrate a good grasp of time and place. It's good to find a mystery series that doesn't suffer from second-novel (or third-novel) blahs.

Inspector Ian Rutledge of Scotland Yard is tall, intelligent, well-bred, Oxford-educated, and as handsome as they come. All reasons enough for his jealous boss to get him out of headquarters, assign him chancy cases in the hinterlands, and if Rutledge fails, so much the better.

Before the Great War, Rutledge had been successful at the Yard. Five years of service as an Army officer in the muddy, stinking trenches in France, his wounds, and especially his mental trauma have left him questioning his own ability, wondering whether he still has the old skills, whether he can actually keep up with the challenges of returning to the job. He looks thin, haggard, and tired.

Shell shock has left Rutledge with the ineradicable presence in his mind of the voice of one Hamish MacLeod, a noncommissioned officer he had to have executed by firing squad for refusing to follow orders to suicidally advance the men into withering enemy fire. Hamish counterpoints everything Rutledge says, does, or thinks.

While the war killed hundreds of thousands of British soldiers and civilians, the survivors were profoundly changed, including most of the characters in "Search the Dark" by Charles Todd.

Rutledge is dispatched to Singleton Magna, a small town in rural Dorset county, southwest of London, where the victim's body was found. Bert Mowbray was arrested for the crime. Though Mowbray's wife and two children had been killed years before in a bombing in London, he insisted he had just seen them with another man getting off the train. Now the wife is dead, the children and her new man are missing, and Mowbray is in jail for murder. Rutledge must clear up the confusion, identify the victim, and find the children.

Rutledge's investigation takes him to several nearby towns, where other young women are missing, and there is no shortage of suspects. Charles Todd's characters and their relationships are fully formed. You'll be puzzled and intrigued to the end.

I'm afraid plot -- the standout selling point of murder mysteries -- is just not Todd's strength.

As in all of these books, Inspector Rutledge simply wanders back and forth, seemingly at random, between a small handful of locations finding out about the past, and by "the past" I mean human relationships.

So we get, in exhaustive and boring detail, all sorts of statements about how characters A, B, C, D, and E -- one or more of whom are dead -- feel or once felt about each other. That's 90+% of the plot, such as it is.

As in all of these books, this gradual social mapping, extending back ten or twenty years, is supplemented primarily with sketches of English village life circa 1920. For many readers, this is an attraction. Not for me; I think if you've read about one English village, you've read about them all.

What we don't get in an Inspector Rutledge novel is any sort of forward momentum -- for instance, new murders taking place after the initial one that begins the story, or even compelling new evidence about that first murder.

The result is a very slow work that so far from being hard to put down, is hard to pick up.

Hamish is an unfortunate sidekick, as well. He is simply not ever developed; book after book, he interjects at random in a thick and condescending Highland accent, saying obvious or inaccurate things and making predictions that don't come true. Unlike the classic sidekicks -- Archie Goodwin, Captain Hastings, etc. -- Hamish doesn't narrate the tale, either. He really has no purpose except to keep reminding us that poor Rutledge is tormented (in case we forgot).

Todd could get better results by sticking to third person limited -- it would make the books more logically consistent. I'm sorry to say that instead, Todd frequently decides to inspect a minor character's brain and tell us how she (usually it is a she) is thinking or feeling. There is no apparent rhyme or reason to determine when this happens, except Todd's whims; it seems scattered and disjointed.

The murderer in this particular book is not one I saw coming, so I'll give Todd credit for that, but it's because of the extreme implausibility, which I can't discuss for fear of creating a spoiler.

The other cops, almost without exception, are jealous of and dislike Rutledge and are hoping to see him fail. This, too, is standard for the series and therefore exceedingly predictable.

I believe I'm through with these books.

The problems of WWI veterans readjusting to civilian life forms the core of the setting for this. Todd centers on the attitudes of British villagers after the war, but there's still plenty to intrigue mystery fans. There's lots of tragedy here, but it is basically a penetrating study of people. Highly recomended.