Synopsis
Scotland Yard's most intrepid inspector is sent to Dorset with strict orders to coordinate the search for two missing children, but his investigation is complicated by his growing feelings for a potential suspect.
Reviews
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 Withdrawn and suicidal, the suspect will speak to no one, and the police call Scotland Yard for help in finding the two young children who may have been in the dead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.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
It's the end of WWI and Inspector Ian Rutledge is back at his Scotland Yard jobphysically uninjured but plagued by the inner, nagging voice of dead soldier Hamish MacLeod (A Test of Wills, etc.). His first assignment takes him to the village of Singleton Magna in Dorset. There, bull-headed Inspector Hildebrand has in custody shell-shocked veteran Bert Mowbray, accused of killing a woman he'd seen on the train platform with two children, declaring the woman to be his wife. Mowbrays later search for her seems to have ended in a brutal killing, and now the search is on for the childrenand fast becoming a dead end. It soon develops that another person in the area is missing. In nearby Charlburg, Simon Wyatt, expected to follow in his father's illustrious political footsteps, has returned from the war with French wife Aurore and no ambition except to set up a small museum of Indian and Far Fast artifacts. His onetime near fiance Elizabeth Napier has brought him her London father's competent assistant to help with the museum. Now that assistant (Margaret Tarlton) has vanished, and Hildebrand refuses to exhume Mowbray's victim's body to verify her identity. Strangely enough, a body does surface; this time its that of Betty Cooper, a maid who worked for a local farm family but had higher aspirations. Her death provides further unneeded complicationsuntil, with little effort on Ian's part, all the unlikely answers come to light. A bit livelier than the author's previous work, with plenty of suspense despite its unfocused plot, unreal people, and too- leisurely style. Best for those who like their mystery melodramas written the old-fashioned way. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
British Detective Ian Rutledge, the World War I veteran with remnants of shell shock, searches for two missing children in Dorset. The children's mother, meanwhile, has been murdered, but the accused, also a psychically tormented veteran, may be a scapegoat. A well-crafted historical from the author of Wings of Time (LJ 2/1/98).
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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