Search the Dark

Set just after the WWI in Dorset, this murder mystery involves psychological twists and turns of the heart. Inspector Ian Rutledge, a mentally impaired veteran through whose brain an incubus named Hamish communicates, finds himself surrounded by others who have also been damaged in one way or another by the war. The unknown or invisable injuries may be the ones that are the most dangerous. Charles Todd handles the various British accents adroitly but has a little trouble with the French. This is a sad and thought-provoking story set before scientific testing would have changed its outcome. B.H.B. (c) AudioFile 2000, Portland, Maine

May 3, 1999
The third compelling Ian Rutledge mystery (Wings of Fire; A Test of Wills) takes the sensitive and appealing Scotland Yard inspector, a former WWI officer, to the countryside of Dorset. In 1919, another former soldier is arrested for murder in the town of Singleton Magna after the battered corpse of a young woman is found nearby. Withdrawn and suicidal, the suspect will speak to no one, and the police call Scotland Yard for help in finding the two young children who may have been in the dead woman's charge. Rutledge arrives, still carrying in his head the voice of Hamish MacLeod, a Scottish deserter whom he executed during the war and whose harsh, conscience-like presence in the inspector's mind seems to soften as the novel progresses, adding dimension to Todd's literary device. In his investigation, Rutledge encounters others whose spirits were ravaged in the war: Simon Wyatt, scion of local gentry, who has abandoned his plans to serve in Parliament; his French wife, unaccepted by the townspeople; Wyatt's former fianc e, who may not have given up her previous expectations; a young local man whose head wound has left him mentally diminished; and an independent young woman from London. The discovery of a second woman's battered corpse further knots Rutledge's task, which is rooted, it evolves in this fine period mystery, as much in love as in war. Author tour.