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Type of bind: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN num: 9780312971281
ISBN number: 0312971281
Label: St. Martin's Paperbacks
Manufacturer: St. Martin's Paperbacks
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 304
Printing Date: May 15, 2000
Publishing house: St. Martin's Paperbacks
Sale Popularity Level: 251087
Studio: St. Martin's Paperbacks
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
The introspective hero of wings of Fire and A Test of Wills (Edgar Award nominee) return in a provocative new mystery. Inspector Ian Rutledge, haunted by memories of World War I and the harrowing presence of Hamish, a dead soldier, is 'a superb characterization of a man whose wounds have made him a stranger i his own land.' (The New York Times Book Review)
A dead woman two missing children bring Inspector Rutledge to the lovely Dorset town of Singeton Magna, where the truth lies buried with the dead. A tormented veteran whose family died in an enemy bombing is the chief suspect. Dubious, Rutledge presses on to find the real killer. And when another body is found in the rich Dorset earth, his quest reaches into the secret lives of villagers and Londoners whose privileged positions and private passions give them every reason to thwart him. Someone is protecting a murderer. And two children are out there, somewhere, the dark...
Amazon.com Review:
In Search the Dark, the third entry in Charles Todd's remarkable series, the walking-wounded survivors of World War I crowd the English landscape. Scotland Yard's Inspector Rutledge is one of many who suffer from shell shock. He constantly hears--and responds to--the voice of Hamish, a Scottish soldier he shot for cowardice. His latest case does not help his fragile state of mind as it involves another weary and discouraged veteran, Bert Mowbray.
On his way to Lyme Regis to search for work, Bert looks out of the train window in a town called Singleton Magna, and sees an unbelievable sight--his wife and two children who he thought were killed in a London bombing raid. He leaps off the train and tries to find his family, racing desperately across fields and country roads, and finally winding up asleep under a tree. Meanwhile, the battered body of a woman is found on the edge of a cornfield, and Mowbray is arrested. Is the woman his wife? Did he kill her? And what happened to the two children who were with her?
Everywhere Rutledge looks, he shows us various forms of damage caused by the war--from the hopes of a local girl whose lover returned with a French wife, to the trauma that Mowbray is going through. As in the very first two books, A Test of Wills and Wings of Fire, Todd demonstrates the massive damage done to an entire country by focusing on the small, personal battles of the survivors. --Dick Adler
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Rated by buyers 
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The Ian Rutledge series is top rate. As soon as I finish one I'm compelled to start on the subsequent right away. Set in small villages, the books give a real feel for post WWI rural England. The characters are very real and the plots are complex. If you like British mysteries, you'll love these.
Rated by buyers -
Inspector Ian Rutledge of Scotland Yard is tall, intelligent, well-bred, Oxford-educated, and as handsome as they come. All reasons enough for his jealous boss to get him out of headquarters, assign him chancy cases in the hinterlands, and if Rutledge fails, so much the better.
Before the Great War, Rutledge had been successful at the Yard. Five years of service as an Army officer in the muddy, stinking trenches in France, his wounds, and especially his mental trauma have left him questioning his own ability, wondering whether he still has the old skills, whether he can actually keep up with the challenges of returning to the job. He looks thin, haggard, and tired.
Shell shock has left Rutledge with the ineradicable presence in his mind of the voice of one Hamish MacLeod, a noncommissioned officer he had to have executed by firing squad for refusing to follow orders to suicidally advance the men into withering enemy fire. Hamish counterpoints everything Rutledge says, does, or thinks.
While the war killed hundreds of thousands of British soldiers and civilians, the survivors were profoundly changed, including most of the characters in "Search the Dark" by Charles Todd.
Rutledge is dispatched to Singleton Magna, a small town in rural Dorset county, southwest of London, where the victim's body was found. Bert Mowbray was arrested for the crime. Though Mowbray's wife and two children had been killed years before in a bombing in London, he insisted he had just seen them with another man getting off the train. Now the wife is dead, the children and her new man are missing, and Mowbray is in jail for murder. Rutledge must clear up the confusion, identify the victim, and find the children.
Rutledge's investigation takes him to several nearby towns, where other young women are missing, and there is no shortage of suspects. Charles Todd's characters and their relationships are fully formed. You'll be puzzled and intrigued to the end.
Rated by buyers 
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I wouldn't recommend this as an individual novel, for there are far better mysteries, not to mention books in this series by Todd. However, if you are reading the series in full, you should keep trudging through this one for the rewarding last quarter of the book.
It's really, really slow moving and dull for more than half the book, and has been noted in other reviews, comes up with a good ending that is surprising and entertaining. So I was glad I stuck with it. As I continue to work through this series, I hope I find this book is an abberation in pace.
Rated by buyers 
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Ian Rutledge was a top homicide detective with Scotland Yard before he went off to WWI for 'King and Country'. Like many men who spent too much time in the trenches and saw too much death and waste of men's lives; he is haunted by the ghost of a man (Hamish MacLeod) he had to shoot for cowardice.
He is sent to Singleton Magna to look for the children of another scarred veteran who may have killed them and his wife. The problem is that the wife and children were killed four years ago in a Zeppelin bombing in London.
This town is filled with men like him; Simon Wyatt, the son of the family that has supplied the last three generations of MPs; the nephew of the pub owner who is recovering from massive abdominial wounds and a broken heart, and the son of the late Church Rector who was wounded in the head in France.
Added to this group is the French wife of Wyatt, his ex-fiancee, her best friend and hired assistant to Simon, a missing parlour maid, the local inspector who is to glad to jump to any conclusion that will end this case, and the ex-fiancee's father who is an MP and former government minister.There are also all the other locals, from quiet farmers to the town busybody who all have their own ideas of who and why the murders were committed.
In addition to dealing with all these people, he is still dealing with his own demon (Hamish) who is never far below the surface; and always happy to tell Rutledge of his failings and shortcomings. If you can figure out the reason and the murderer before the denoument, your a better detective than me.
Rated by buyers -
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