A Long Shadow (Inspector Ian Rutledge Series #8)

by Charles Todd Narrated by Samuel Gillies

Overview

Scotland Yard's Inspector Ian Rutledge brought the Great War home with him, and its horrors haunt him still. On New Year's Eve 1919, he finds a brass cartridge casing, similar to countless others he'd seen on the battlefield, on the steps of a friend's house. Soon there are more, purposely placed where he is sure to discover them. Unexpectedly drawn away from London to a small Northamptonshire village, he investigates the strange case of a local constable shot with a bow and arrow in an allegedly spirit-infested wood. Here among the taciturn townsfolk, embroiled in a three-year-old mystery of a vanished young girl, Rutledge hopes to keep his own ghosts at bay. But his stalker has followed him. And now the emotionally shattered policeman walking the razor's edge of sanity must somehow keep his balance long enough to discover who is tracking him...and why.

Editorial Reviews

Patrick Anderson

It is a compliment to the authors that I found myself thinking of Agatha Christie as I read their book. Their Dudlington is not unlike the villages where Christie set The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and other novels, although the two Americans do not provide the wit, originality and depth she brought to village life. As in the British classics of the 1920s, the authors deal in murder most foul, virtue imperiled, gossip, poison, ancient grudges, revenge, social status, altered identities—even spiritualism. Like the classic authors, they avoid profanity and sex, and keep most violence offstage. Perhaps the greatest difference is that Christie, writing immediately after the Great War, used the foibles of Inspector Poirot and Miss Marple to help her readers forget its horrors, while these writers, with the added grief of nearly another century of war, are quite willing to remind us of its realities. A Long Shadow is not an outstanding novel, but it is readable, serious, admirably haunted.
—The Washington Post

Kirkus Reviews

The bow-and-arrow shooting of a Hertfordshire policeman carries Inspector Ian Rutledge (A Cold Treachery, 2005, etc.) back even further in time than his traumatic WWI memories. Everyone in Dudlington had avoided the wood in which Constable Bart Hensley was found. Even Hensley himself, when he regains consciousness, insists that he didn't go into the wood himself; he must have been carried there after he was shot. But Rutledge suspects the motive for the attack lies there. Even though the few locals who will talk to him say it's impossible, he wonders if Emma Mason, who vanished five years ago at 17, is buried in the wood. Hunkering down in Hensley's own house after misanthropic innkeeper Frank Keating refuses to put him up, Rutledge uncovers a sinister pattern in the Mason family. Emma's mother Beatrice, an aspiring painter, escaped Dudlington before the War to live in London, but she disappeared herself in 1906. Yet the body Rutledge eventually discovers in the wood isn't Emma's or Beatrice's; it belongs to a man who was laid to rest nearly 40 years ago. Aided by the ghostly presence of Hamish MacLeod, the world's most unusual Watson, Rutledge pursues the truth despite the villagers' denials, and despite his uneasy certainty that someone has followed him from London determined to kill him. Incisive as ever, though this time Todd's usual slow start is bookended by a conclusion that daringly leaves several loose ends hanging.

From the Publisher

Excels at intricate relationships among characters....Another winning story.” — Library Journal

“Riveting historical mystery.” — Romantic Times

“Incisive as ever.” — Kirkus Reviews

“A daunting portrait of a town that keeps its thoughts, its troubles and most of all its secrets to itself.” — New York Times Book Review

“[A] remarkable series....Keeps readers on the edge right up to the stunning end.” — Detroit Free Press

“Atmosphere aplenty.” — Charlotte Observer

“Evocative.” — Cleveland Plain Dealer

Romantic Times

Riveting historical mystery.

New York Times Book Review

A daunting portrait of a town that keeps its thoughts, its troubles and most of all its secrets to itself.

Charlotte Observer

Atmosphere aplenty.

Detroit Free Press

[A] remarkable series....Keeps readers on the edge right up to the stunning end.

Cleveland Plain Dealer

Evocative.

Charlotte Observer

Atmosphere aplenty.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170528295
Publisher:	Recorded Books, LLC
Publication date:	10/17/2014
Series:	Inspector Ian Rutledge Series , #8
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

A Long Shadow

Chapter One

Dudlington, 1919

Constable Hensley walked quietly through Frith's Wood, looking left and right for some sign that others had been here before him. But the wet, matted leaves showed him nothing, and the cold sun, slanting through bare trees, was more primitive than comforting. It would be dark soon enough. The light never lasted this time of year, unlike the gloriously bright evenings of summer, when it seemed to linger as if unaware of dusk creeping toward it.

And one particular summer evening . . .

He came to the end of the wood and turned to retrace his steps to the small clearing where he'd left his bicycle.

Halfway there, he could have sworn he heard someone moving behind him, a soft step barely audible. But his ears were attuned to the lightest sound.

Wheeling about, he scanned the trees around him, but there was no one to be seen through the tangle of undergrowth and trunks. No one living . . .

Imagination, he told himself. Nerves, a small voice in his head countered, and he shivered in spite of himself.

After a moment he went hurrying on, not looking back again until he'd retrieved his bicycle and mounted it. Then he scanned Frith's Wood a final time, wondering how a place so small could appear to be so gloomy and somehow threatening, even in winter.

The Saxons, so it was said, had beheaded men here once, long ago. Taking no prisoners, unwilling to be hindered by captives, they'd come only for booty, and nothing else. Not slaves, not land or farms, just gold or silver or whatever else could be bartered at home. A greedy people, he thought, giving his bicycle a littlepush to start it forward. Greedy and bloody, by all accounts. But nearly fifteen hundred years later, the name of the wood hadn't changed. And no one cared to set foot there after dark.

He was glad to be out of it.

Yet he could still feel someone watching him, someone on the edge of the wood, someone without substance or reality. Dead men, most likely. Or their ghosts.

One ghost.

He didn't look again until he'd reached the main road. Out of the fields, away from the wood, he felt safer. Now he could pedal back the way he'd come, make the turning at The Oaks, and sweep down into Dudlington. Anyone seeing him would think he'd been at the pub, or sent for from Letherington. He'd been clever, covering his tracks. It made sense to plan ahead and not go rushing about. If he had to go there.

Of course a really clever man, he told himself, would stay away altogether.

The way behind him was still empty.

A Long Shadow. Copyright © by Charles Todd. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

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