{"id":1247,"date":"2014-01-30T19:21:27","date_gmt":"2014-01-31T01:21:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=1247"},"modified":"2014-01-30T19:21:27","modified_gmt":"2014-01-31T01:21:27","slug":"charles-todd-hunting-shadows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/charles-todd-hunting-shadows\/","title":{"rendered":"Charles Todd: Hunting Shadows"},"content":{"rendered":"
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It\u2019s been awhile since I\u2019ve checked in with Charles Todd\u2019s Ian Rutledge \u2013 he hasn\u2019t changed much, though Hamish, the voice inside his head, has retreated a bit.\u00a0 He\u2019s still a thorough and careful detective.\u00a0 Todd is great at set-ups, and this book has a really good one:\u00a0 a man is shot and killed by a sniper on the way into a wedding.\u00a0 In 1920. There\u2019s apparently no rhyme or reason to it though the book opens with a prologue at a funeral where someone is full of flat out hatred for the dead man.\u00a0 The mother and son behind Charles Todd are far too clever to give away who that might be, however.<\/p>\n

\"Hunting<\/a>When another sniper death occurs, this time of a small-time politician in a local square making a speech, Rutledge is called in from Scotland Yard.\u00a0 As the title suggests, the killer is smart and has virtually disappeared.\u00a0 No one saw him or even has any idea how the two men were connected in life, much less in death.\u00a0 A brilliant opening sequence sees Rutledge arriving in fen country where the deaths occurred just as a blinding fog falls over the landscape.\u00a0 The fens are a dangerous place to be walking around in in the dark \u2013 they\u2019re full of unexpected dangerous holes \u2013 and when a shadow appears out of the darkness and leads Rutledge to a nearby house and safety it seems like a providential miracle.\u00a0 But the helpful stranger is just as much a shadow as the killer.<\/p>\n

The whole story seems wreathed in atmospheric misdirection, wrong assumptions, and impenetrable questions that seem to have no answer.\u00a0 This is a very skillfully told tale, and though it gets a bit meander-y in the middle, when you get to the end of the story, patience is definitely rewarded as Todd delivers a rousing and fascinating solution to the crime.\u00a0 Rutledge lives in the shadows a bit himself with his relentless memories of the war, and many of the men he meets have the same memories.\u00a0 It\u2019s like an almost unacknowledged fraternity of shadowy brothers.\u00a0 This is a book to be savored, both for its story and for its atmosphere and characters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s been awhile since I\u2019ve checked in with Charles Todd\u2019s Ian Rutledge \u2013 he hasn\u2019t changed much, though Hamish, the voice inside his head, has retreated a bit.\u00a0 He\u2019s still a thorough and careful detective.\u00a0 Todd is great at set-ups, and this book has a really good one:\u00a0 a man is shot and killed by … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[10],"class_list":["post-1247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-historical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1247"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1247\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1249,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1247\/revisions\/1249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}