Hunting Shadows: An Inspector Ian Rutledge Mystery

Tricky plotting and rich atmospherics (“the Fen country, where water had separated everyone and made foreigners of people ten miles distant”) distinguish bestseller Todd’s 16th novel featuring Scotland Yard’s Insp. Ian Rutledge (after 2013’s Proof of Guilt). In September 1920, Rutledge has a real baffler on his hands: a sniper has just killed two seemingly unrelated men in the Fen country of East Anglia. Captain Hutchinson was gunned down as he was about to enter a church for a wedding, and Tory candidate for Parliament Herbert Swift’s head was blown off as he began a stump speech. The initial inquiries yielded little and resulted in the locals calling in the Yard, but apart from a woman who claims she saw a monster just as Swift was shot, there isn’t much for Rutledge to go on. Todd (the pen name of a mother-son writing team) has rarely been better. Agent: Jane Chelius, Jane Chelius Literary Agency. (Feb.)