(2000) Another good one as Rutledge tries to solve the apparent murder of a woman who leaves behind a child. Or did she? Or is it the woman they think it is? Is it even a woman? Again, I like the way that Todd uses PTSD for all of the WWI vets who are involved in this case. We also learn a lot more of the reason Hamish haunts Rutledge. Rutledge was Hamish's superior who had to order his execution during the war for desertion. KIRKUS:Apt to keep to herself at the best of times and isolated all the more cruelly from the Scottish village of Duncarrick by the death of the aunt she went to live with, Fiona MacDonald is easy prey for a series of poisonous letters charging that the son she's claimed was left fatherless by WWI never had a proper father to begin with. And when an equally anonymous counter-letter defends Fiona against the charge of harlotry by asserting that she'd taken the boy from his real mother after her death, the constabulary investigates¥and finds enough evidence to jail Fiona for murder. Her refusal to mount a convincing defense only sets the town more harshly against her, and her situation seems desperate until the arrival of troubled war veteran Inspector Ian Rutledge (Search the Dark, 1999, etc.), ordered this time to investigate the disappearance of imperious Lady Maude Gray's suffragist daughter Eleanor, who just might be the real mother of the child Fiona's been raising. Rutledge, literally haunted by the familiar spirit of Hamish MacLeod, the corporal he'd unwillingly executed for cowardice on the French front, is horrified to discover that Fiona was MacLeod's fianc?eÂ¥and that's only the first of many unpleasant discoveries he'll make in this richly tangled mystery, which continues to borrow its storytelling conventions from the 1919 period of its setting.More Q&A than a season with Regis Philbin, but the creeping drive toward Todd's powerful climactic revelations will make it all worthwhile for readers who go the distance.Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2000ISBN: 0-553-80168-6Page Count: 320

This story revolves around two women . . . the missing daughter of a wealthy woman and the fiancé of Hamish, the haunting voice of the dead soldier in Ian Rutledge’s shell-shocked mind. The wealthy woman doesn’t believe the body found is her daughter, meanwhile there’s a poison pen letter campaign and going on and smearing Fiona as a woman who has stolen a child and killed the mother. Ian desperately wants to help Fiona but she’s keeping a secret about the child. Ian interviews many characters and re-interviews them before he can get Fiona to trust him and he figures out who is behind it. ( )

I read this before about ten years ago. This time I listened to the audio with my husband. We enjoyed it. I must say I didn't remember it at all and remained puzzled throughout as to "who done it". The atmosphere and some of the setting felt familiar, but the characters all felt new. ( )

1919 Inspector Rutledge has been sent to Scotland. The remains of a female have been found, but do they belong to Lady Eleonor Gray, missing since 1916. Her mother Lady Maude refuses to believe so. Meanwhile in Duncarrick, Fiona MacLeod has been accused and arrested for among other crimes, murder.
An enjoyable and well-written historical mystery with its interesting main character ( )

Rutledge must save fiancé of man he executed