I find these books end a bit abruptly. There is a lot of detail during the build up, but after the revealing of the perpetrator, boom, the end.

Rutledge meets Meredith Channing in this book at a party he attends with his sister given by friends. Channing guides a seance but allows Rutledge to be excused from participating (he fears his secrets from the war may be revealed). He fears Channing knows something about him. As he leaves the party he finds a bullet casing used during war. Throughout this novel, he finds casings; he becomes aware that he is being stalked. The casings are a separate part of the mystery having nothing to do with the murder investigation to which he is called. The initial crime is the shooting of a constable with an arrow in a woods feared by the village. Rutledge delves into the past and discovers the secret murder of a young girl.

I found it difficult to remember who was who in this novel. Especially the folks who were involved in a fire that was set deliberately years before the action takes place in the current case Rutledge is sent to solve.

I think it's difficult for me to get some of the red herrings and subtleties when listening to an audio book. I'm not sure I understand how Beatrice was killed. A lot of the hows were not answered which is my main complant about these books. I'd like more detail and explanations. I do enjoy the psychological aspects of the mysteries but sometimes the details are too few. I wish the authors would spend more time on the how, why, and when instead of all the details of buildings and scenery.

4.5 stars
I just loved this book in the series! So far I've enjoyed them all, they're wonderful entertainment.

This book was honestly one of the best books I've ever read! It had a Sherlock Holmes feel, which I really loved. Ian Rutledge and Hamish are characters that pull you into the story.

Oh, Inspector Rutledge, you troubled, haunted man. I love this character! His trauma from the war permeates every aspect of his life, including his job. It's heart-wrenching. And he fights it right alongside the cases he's working. Such good writing!

and Tormented Inspector, 11 Feb 2006


"I don't want you to die," she said bluntly. "I've seen enough of death and destruction. I want to hold my séances and bring back dead kings and silly jesters and the ghost of Hamlet's father. There is no harm in that and it makes people laugh. And, it keeps my mind from dwelling on what it should not be remembering. You were the soldier, Inspector but I put soldiers back together. Or tried to help others do that. I don't know which is worse."
In the New Year of 1919, Scotland Yard's Inspector Rutledge has gone to a dinner party with his sister. While there he finds a spent brass cartridge casing as he is leaving the party to answer an emergent call. Then a while later he finds another. What do these spent cartridges foretell, and why do we care?

Inspector Rutledge is sent by his superiors to a tiny hamlet called Dudlington. He is to investigate the attempted murder of an ex-inspector Hensley. As he arrives Inspector Rutledge feels an odd aura that he suspects is a fore warning of what is to come. The hamlet is suspicious of this Scotland Yard man and is not as welcoming as they could be. But as events unfold Inspector Ian Rutledge makes a name for himself, and the towns people begin to believe that maybe this man can solve some of the mysteries that have just begun. A young girl is missing and their Constable attacked. A Mrs Charlston, a soldier who had misfortunes, a pub owner and others who all come into play and Inspector Ian Rutledge will put the clues all together, and then find out who may be stalking him.

Charles Todd is the mother/son team of Charles and Caroline Todd. Inspector Rutledge mysteries are set in post World War I England. "A Long Shadow" is the eighth novel for this team. In the previous seven novels we learn that Inspector Rutledge was in the Great War and, as many before him have, he suffered 'shell shock'. He is hiding this and it is a heavy secret. One of the most unusual aspects of this series is that Inspector Rutledge has a friend or a voice who is with him almost constantly, Hamish MacLeod. A young Scotsman who plays a large part in this Inspector's history; now and then.

The Charles Todd duo's new mystery series is a must read for anyone who love English Mysteries and a thriller. A real find for me and recommended by a friend. Highly Recommended. prisrob 2-10-06

After reading the previous book in this series, A Cold Treachery, I was interested to see where Inspector Ian Rutledge's cases would take him next and I decided to jump right in and read the next book in the series. After all, it was already on my Kindle waiting for me, just a click away.

We first encounter the inspector here on New Year's Eve, 1919, only a short while after the end of his last case. He accompanies his sister, Frances, to the house of mutual friends for a dinner party. At the party, one of the guests is alleged to have some psychic powers and she is asked to hold a seance, an activity that is very popular in the London of the day. This makes Inspector Rutledge, who has an intimate knowledge of and relationship with the dead from the recent war, very uncomfortable, and he is relieved to receive a phone call from Scotland Yard which gives him an excuse to leave.

As he is leaving, he finds a brass cartridge casing on the steps outside. He picks it up and sees that there is an engraving on it. He puts it in his pocket and goes on his way, but soon he's finding other such engraved casings. Someone seems to be following him around and leaving the casings for him to find. For a man already on the knife's edge of mental collapse because of PTSD, this seems a deliberate attempt to unsettle and threaten him.

Mercifully, he is called away from London to a small Northamptonshire village where the local constable has been shot and seriously wounded by a bow and arrow, while in woods that the locals consider to be haunted. Trying to find out what has happened proves difficult for Rutledge because the local folk are extremely taciturn and close-mouthed.

Rutledge learns that there are other mysteries which the villagers seem intent on hiding for some reason. For example, a teenage girl disappeared from the village some three years earlier and has never been found. Her grandmother, with whom she lived, says she must have gone to London to look for her missing mother. But did she? And was the constable looking for her grave in the woods when he was shot?

It soon becomes apparent to Rutledge that there is a connection between the missing girl and the wounded constable, but just what that connection is is not at all clear.

Meanwhile, distressingly, Rutledge continues to find engraved cartridge casings in odd places and then while he is out in his motorcar one day, a bullet smashes his windscreen, barely missing his head. Who is this unknown adversary who appears to be stalking him?

To complicate the situation further, the psychic from the New Year's Eve party shows up in the village and expresses concern about Rutledge, but is her concern genuine or is she somehow connected to the stalker?

In order to solve the mysteries, Rutledge must find a way to break the silence of this unfriendly and secretive village and he must find the motive behind the disappearance of the teenager and the wounding of the constable and discover the connection between the two.

This is another eloquent story of suspense told in absorbing prose with an emotional depth that gives the reader a sense of Ian Rutledge as a very real and sympathetic, if flawed, character. He is a character that we can care about, one about which we can look forward to reading more.

Ok, so another one bites the dust. I think this is the fifth book in this series that I've read since I discovered it a week ago. So, I probably don't need to say much more about it - except that perhaps my favourite character is the one that doesn't really exist except in the protagonist's head!

Very good

I am going back and reading these novels in time order--after of course reading the last one first. None of them is a disappointment--some are just better than others. This one had a few too many characters for me and the setting was not as well drawn and intriguing as some of them have been. The resolution was well done and satisfying. I'm reading to head on to Ian's next adventure in rural England.

All of the books by Charles Todd are a pleasant read with nice accurate tie-ins to the post World War I period in England, including the transitional difficulties to civilian life of the main character, Inspector Rutledge, and others who survived the war. Rutledge's transition is more difficult because he has no visible wounds, but suffers from what is now recognized as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

In this particular installment, the author (Charles Todd is actually a mother-son writing team) once again makes post World War I a substantive part of the mystery. There are two separate threads in the story: both of the mystery of who is stalking the Inspector, and the main story which is the attack on the local Inspector, a long-missing teenager, and the mystery of Firth's Woods.

If you enjoy 20th century accurate historical fiction as well as mysteries this series will be enjoyable to you.