This is the fifteenth book in the superb Inspector Ian Rutledge series that is now seventeen years old. Rutledge is a veteran of four years of trench warfare, a very scarred and troubled survivor who has struggled since returning to Scotland Yard. He solves his cases, but endlessly deals with the consequences of the Great War. He can identify veterans a mile away. Thunderstorms unnerve him. His claustrophobia keeps him off trains, making him one of the early regular drivers of an automobile. Most of all, he is tortured by the memory of his Scot sergeant, Hamish, who refused his order to go over the top. Rutledge knew his order was absurd, but had Hamish executed for his refusal. The authors (it is actually a mother/son team) know their history, as the British executed seven times as many of their front-line line soldiers as the Boche did. Hamish is his conscience/troubled soul/second guesser, with whom he carries on endless silent conversations and the most fascinating literary contrivance I have ever experienced.
The books usually excel on three levels: a sense of time and place, Hamish's conversations and the mystery Rutledge solves. Here, there is little feel for London and its environs in the fall of 1920 and Hamish has been significantly played down. The plot, which involves a missing wine importer and his partner, meanders from one confusing place to another. I sincerely hope the authors had a bad day and that they haven't run out of creative steam.
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