This story is very sad. All of the Rutledge stories are sad; they take place in a miserable England post WWI, when hope and altruism have been trammeled into the mud of the Somme. Inspector Rutledge of Scotland Yard is particularly susceptible to depression having been buried alive with his morbid compatriots in the aforementioned mud. He carries patriot Hamish MacLeod around in his psyche as a kind of verbal talisman of his suffering.

Bert Mobray, the pathetic murder suspect of Search the Dark, is a kind of alter ego for Rutledge. He is a man as thoroughly tormented by what he has seen, what he has done, and what he has lost as Rutledge. Bert has presumably murdered a woman in Singleton Magna, but Rutledge will not take easy answers -- cannot take easy answers -- and thus torments himself as well as his superiors (as if!), and poor Bert, too.

I must confess, that by book three (Test of Wills [1], and Wings of Fire, [2]) of the series, I am somewhat weary of Inspector Rutledge’s propensity to adoration of female flesh. Having lost his beloved fiancée to her terror of his psychological damage, Rutledge has a distinct tendency to idolize the women who cross his detective path. Were he in less pain, I’d be tempted to describe him as a womanizer.

As it is, I can only say that Search the Dark is a very interesting, beautifully written, convoluted and fascinating, gorgeous characterization of life and death in jolly ol’ from the point-of-view of a mesmerizing hero created by a writer named Charles Todd.

--Lee Gilmore