The Black Ascot

Knowing he was about to be arrested for the murder of the woman he loved, Alan Barrington pulled off a remarkable vanishing trick, disappearing without trace despite a massive, Britain-wide manhunt. Did he kill her because she married someone else? Or was it a botched attempt to kill her husband? Or was he innocent? And, of course, where is he? Eleven years later, a possible sighting of the fugitive brings Inspector Rutledge, a recovering WW1 shell-shock victim, into the investigation.

After this promising start, the plot loses steam as Rutledge painstakingly reviews the case files and re-interviews those involved. True, he picks up snippets of information about Barrington’€™s past and stumbles across photographs of him as a young man, but the laboriously gathered evidence raises more questions than it provides answers. Thereafter, however, the pace accelerates. The inspector learns of Barrington’€™s assumed identity and senses he’€™s closing in on his man when the investigation is thrown off course by an attempt on the life of a blind man only incidentally connected to the case. To complicate matters, Rutledge is involved in a violent incident, which threatens to destroy his still fragile mental equilibrium. He now has to conquer his wartime demons if he is to successfully track down the killer. If you haven’€™t read any of the mysteries in this series featuring Inspector Rutledge and Hamish, the voice in his head, The Black Ascot is an excellent entry point.