This is as much a police procedural as I am a giraffe. Sure, I have four limbs and a neck. Sure, the book has a police inspector as its central character. But there the similarities end. As with the first Rutledge fantasy, a plethora of two dimensional characters and weary irrelevancies pad out a storyline in desperate need of a plot.
This is a very interesting, but disturbing, psycho mystery. The pace of the novel is a bit uneven but the plot, its twists and resolution are more than worth the effort. The complexity of PTSD is rarely better told (explained).
This mystery series is most interesting for its depiction of shell shock and post WW1 England. In Ian Rutledge, Charles Todd has a character that
As far as WW1 stories, I like Ian and his Hammish better than Hemmingway's Nick Adams. All the Daphne Du Marier and Victoria Holt I read as a teenager makes any story with Cornwall shivers me timbers- the ships, the cliffs, the roiling sea, the hardy and distrusting Cornish, and Rutledge delivers all of that Cornish setting and a decent mystery as well.
