I enjoy this series. In this book Rutledge's relationship with Hamish becomes even more real, which is strange & funny. "You'll be as dead as I am, if I'm wrong," Rutledge tells him at one point. Some long-reaching elements seem to start in this book, so I'll be getting the next book soon to find out what happens.

I am loving this series. Excellent characterizations from Ian to Hamish and all the others that make up each story. I can picture them in my mind as I read. The stories are just long enough and give you everything you need to enjoy a good murder mystery. I love the surroundings from London to Dudleyville to Northamton and can see the snow or rain or green grass or forest. The depictions are really good the descriptions vivid. A really, really, really good series. On to #9, with a quick stop at the Somme to do some reference work first. This series has made me very curious about WWI.

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.
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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.

I'm putting a caveat on this review because somehow I read it out of order so I'm hoping once I go back and read the previous book, this one will make a little more sense. I just felt like I was missing things which led me to the discovery that I'd read the wrong book.

Basically, I felt like this book suffered from too many mysteries. I couldn't keep the plots straight or which characters were supposed to be involved in which crime. Very confusing!

Perhaps someone other than me can explain how a story that has very little action, populated by post WW I Brits, and whose protagonist carries someone he was forced to execute in his head can transfix me from start to finish. Must be the writing, right?

The irony is that the author(s), a mother and son team are Americans and live in different cities. Must be empathy and telepathy, right?

Whatever it is, they authored an outstanding mystery in this volume, the 8th in the Inspector Rutledge Series. Rutledge is dispatched by his enemy, Superintendent Bowles, to investigate the wounding by an arrow of Constable Hensley, an ex-London Bobbie, now posted to Dudlington, a very small village North of London. As he works the case he uncovers a number of unsolved disappearances that only he sees as possibly connected to Hensley's attack in the Firth Forest, a forbidding thicket outside of town, usually avoided by the locals.

Eventually we meet most of the people in the town, almost all of whom, resent Rutledge's very presence to say nothing of his inquiries. The characterizations are very well done. Not everyone dislikes Rutledge. He befriends the local Doctor and Rector and gets on well with Hensley's superiors.

There is also a sub-plot involving the mysterious appearance of Maxim machine gun cartridges and Rutledge's feeling he is being shadowed.

In the end, Rutledge, solves the mystery in a surprising conclusion and finds the guilty party in the disappearances. He also finally meets the person who's been leaving the cartridges as he is winding up the Hensley case and the disappearances.

The finale is complicated but satisfying. I can hardly wait to get to volume 9.

A re-read. One of the earlier in the series, better than the latest ones. Hamish, although very real to Ian, is more like Ian's mind and conscience than a remnant from WWI.

Dispatched to Dudlington to find who shot constable Hensely in the back with an arrow, Ian Rutledge finds himself in the position of unraveling several mysteries. Questioning why Hensley had been in Frith’s wood leads to the question, what happened to Emma Mason. All the while Ian is apparently being stalked by an unseen nemesis who keeps leaving shell casings for Ian to find, and who takes a shot at him along the road to Dudlington. The Todds tie these multiple threads into a nice bow as Ian finally solves each mystery. It is another fine installment in the Ian Rutledge series.

A LONG SHADOW (Police Procedural-England-1919) – VG
Todd, Charles – 8th in series
William Morrow, 2006-Hardcover
Inspector Ian Rutledge, still haunted by his past and the spirit of Hamish, keeps finding cartridge shells, etched with poppies, left for him, first in London and still after he is sent to a remote country village where local Constable Hensley has been shot in the back with an arrow and left in a wood shunned by the locals. But Rutledge wonders whether the attack is revenge and associated with the disappearance of Emma Mason, a young local woman.
*** This is not a slap-bang procedural, but dogged, follow-the-clues investigation by Rutledge who stands for the dead. He is a complex, realistically drawn character whose past and the impact of WWI plays a major role in his present. The supporting characters are just as strong, each with their own history woven together into an atmospheric story with excellent sense of place, very good suspense and unexpected twists at the end. Highly recommended, but start with the first book.

I think I am giving this three stars because I am just a bit tired of the series. I need to see some change in Inspector Rutlidge. Hamish is getting a bit tiresome by the 8th book.

Another complex plot that is made even more engaging as we consider with Ian Rutledge this likely candidate then that likely candidate as the culprit. This book is, as all others by Charles Todd that I have read, so readable, the protagonist so kind and yet real, and the characters all well drawn and evenly drawn. The story pulled from page one to page last. The only less great aspect of this book for me was the story of the shadower. It seemed to be too orchestrated and not enough reason for being.
But read this book (and all the Ian Rutledge and other books by Charles Todd) if you love sitting and reading as I do.

Ian Rutledge is an awesome character who brings all the emotion from WWI and its horrors with him into his post war job. He has returned to his position at Scotland Yard where he investigates murders. The impact of the war comes across throughout the novel in the voice of Hamish McCleod, a friend and soldier, lost in the war, helping him investigate.

In this particular story there are two mysteries to solve. First, who is stalking Rutledge? Second, what happened to a missing teenager who disappeared? The locals believe that she is buried in Firth's Woods, a dense, depressingly thick and dark area that people avoid because of tales about ghost hauntings. In reality, the Inspector has been sent to investigate an attack on another policeman who is critically injured in the woods. Somehow though, he feels, the cold case about the missing girl may be part of it. Thus, Rutledge needs to discover not just who tried to kill the policeman but also what happened to the missing girl and who is stalking him. In essense, Rutledge finds himself in a most complex situation that unfolds layer by layer as his investigation proceeds.

Yet another well-crafted mystery by Charles Todd. Ian Rutledge has to be one of my most favorite detectives--and Hamish, too!