Another great installment in the Inspector Ian Rutledge series of mysteries! A constable is wounded in a deep wood and Scotland Yard sends Rutledge to investigate. As in all of these mysteries, more questions are raised than answered once Ian arrives on the scene.

What I love about these mysteries is the time period. This one is in the winter of 1920. Ian still suffers from the shell shock of WWI. On top of the mystery he's sent to unravel, he's being stalked by someone who knows where he is and leaves empty shells from the War to show Ian that he has access to him.

As the mystery concerning the constable deepens and Ian learns the legend of the woods, another old secret is revealed and suddenly he has a second mystery that may very well be related to the current one.

Filled with believable people, twists and turns, I was not disappointed by A Long Shadow.

I enjoy the Inspector Rutledge series very much. I wish there was some way of incorporating it into history lessons because I feel it gives such an excellent description of trench warfare and the waste and tragedy of all wars. It also allows us to gain insight into the pain and suffering that returning soldiers experience. I am sure the pain is as bad for those in 1918 as it is today, as taking life in war is not easy for soldiers to reconcile.

I am beginning to wonder when Rutledge will be assigned a case in London and I'm curious as to why Bowles feels so much animosity and dislike for him but I'm sure those items will be addressed in subsequent instalments in the series and when they are, I fear the series will draw to a close.

I will continue to enjoy reading through them in the meantime.

There may be some significance to the fact that I chose A Long Shadow, one of Charles Todd’s Ian Rutledge mysteries, as my last book of the year. I’m not a party animal (at least, anymore) and the idea of a quiet New Year’s Eve night finishing a historical mystery seemed pleasant—even though I knew that these mysteries have elements of unpleasantness in their subject matter. They always have to do with death and, by doing so, they deal with life of necessity. A Long Shadow is no exception.

So, with the death of the old year and the beginning of the New, I started a journey that began at a New Year’s Eve party (in 1919) with a séance that threatened Rutledge and his secret of Hamish, the executed soldier who lives in Rutledge’s brain, regarding his PTSD (more likely referred to as combat fatigue in his era). Using a flimsy excuse to flee the séance, Rutledge finds an engraved Maxim machine gun casing and discovers that he is likely at risk at more than being exposed in a séance.

As often happens, Rutledge ends up investigating a mystery in the north of England (though not as far north as in previous novels). I say mystery because it hinges upon an attempted murder which has tenuous connections to other crimes—including, of course, at least one murder. But these country folk are suspicious of police and very closed in communicating with them. So, the investigation (and its solution) is incredibly and to some extent unnecessarily convoluted.
This, of course, is not unusual in a mystery. There are many convoluted plots. A Long Shadow, however, adds in the complications of a mysterious stalker and of an overt “stalker,” for lack of a better term for the latter. Just when one thinks one is untying the knot of the conundrum, the thread slips. This story was so fascinating (though, at times, frustrating).

I always welcome the insights about loss, death, the futility of war, and the human condition in these novels, but sometimes, I just enjoy the simple pleasures. More than once in the novel, Rutledge is told that he is a good listener. In fact, most of the time, it is a begrudging compliment. At one point, the rector says: “Has anyone ever told you that you’re a kind listener? You might have gone to the church, rather than the police, you know.” (p. 304) Naturally, Rutledge in the midst of his haunting with Hamish feels that the “blackness of his own soul” works against him. But it’s an interesting thought of the active listening required by both professions and the horrors and tragedies both must experience. Indeed, listening (as it often does) plays a key role in the resolution of this case.

Despite the fact that the woman who ran the initial séance admitted that she was a fake, there is an intriguing eeriness to the encounters between Rutledge and the lady which was not resolved by the unsettling dialogue at the end. And, since I often note that I perceive the murderer early on in a book, let me clarify that in A Long Shadow, I did not figure out the murderer nor the identity of the shadowy stalker at all. There were a couple of small mysteries of which I was reasonably sure, but I swung and missed on the major ones. Of course, that’s a good thing. A Long Shadow is a solid and entertaining mystery.

This is the 8th novel in a series centering on Inspector Ian Rutledge. That presents some difficulty, mostly in having to cope with a large number of characters who are all new to me as a first-timer. But readers of the series will face less of a challenge as many of the names here will already be familiar.

It is 1919, and the inspector is about to testify in a case in Hertford. He begins to find machine gun shell casings with patterns carved in them, first a single, then two, then three. The third was accompanied by a gunshot through the windshield of the car he was driving. Is he being warned to not testify? Is there something else going on? In another town a constable who has been doing some investigating in a spooky local woods is shot in the back with an arrow, narrowly averting death.

Todd gives us some flavor of the time. Rutledge suffers from shell shock, what we would call today post traumatic stress disorder. He is haunted by the image of a young man he dispatched in the field in order to spare him further suffering. A soldier at a social gathering is missing a limb. (The parallels to contemporary times are unavoidable). There is also an occult fad in the land, epitomized by Mrs Meredith Channing, who is supposed to be able to raise spirits.

There are many, many characters. I confess I found it a challenge to keep them straight, but it was a fun read. This is no one’s notion of literature, but it was enjoyable, light, entertaining. It made me interested to read more books in the series. A good book to read while sitting in the back yard of one’s Cotswolds cottage on a spring day.