You might be taken aback when the lead investigator in the novel you are reading begins speaking to someone who is not there --- not just talking to himself but having a complete conversation with a non-existent person. If you are a reader of Charles Todd’s Inspector Ian Rutledge mystery series, these actions will not surprise you in the least.

Rutledge is a complicated and somewhat broken person who still suffers from what we would now label as serious PTSD from his time spent in World War I. The person he speaks with is Hamish, who was in the trenches with him and perished at his hand. Hamish, with a full Scottish accent, is both a sounding board and a conscience for Rutledge, and he has a lot to say about each investigation.

A FATAL LIE is the latest entry in the series, and is so full of secrets, lies and plot twists that Hamish is far more active than usual as a colleague for Rutledge. In a small Welsh village in Llangollen Valley, a young boy is fishing along the River Dee. When he finally gets a big bite, he tugs on his line and pulls up something he has never seen before: a huge, bloated white thing that when it rolls over has the appearance of once being a person. Scotland Yard is called in.

"A FATAL LIE is by far the most confounding case of Rutledge’s career, and readers will be just as frustrated as he is with each twist and turn. This is the type of classic-style mystery that we have grown to love from Charles Todd, and it never fails to deliver."

The year is 1921, and forensics are nowhere near what they are today. Thanks to his experience in the Royal Army, Rutledge notices what looks like a tattoo on the left arm of the corpse. From what they could gather, the deceased was a man on the diminutive side, slightly above five feet tall. Both the pattern of the tattoo and the size would make the victim a member of the Bantam battalions, a troop of smaller-sized soldiers who fought during the Great War. The question is, how did he die? There are no discerning marks on the body. Could he have fallen or jumped from the nearby aqueduct at a great height? Did he drown? If so, why would he have been in this waterway? Or was he the victim of foul play? Rutledge brings up many questions but no answers. The man is a stranger to the area, and no one remembers a Bantam soldier visiting the town.

Due to his expert investigating, Rutledge notes that the dead man was wearing a shirt that was made personally for him and bore the name of the tailor: Banner. Rutledge locates the tailor and asks him if he ever made a shirt for a Bantam soldier. He responded with the name “Sam Milford.” It turns out that Sam’s wife, Ruth, had come in to order and pick up that shirt. Banner also remembers that waiting outside the shop for Ruth was another man, a soldier considerably taller than Sam who was obviously not her husband.

Rutledge, with Hamish in full presence, makes his way to the home of the Milford family on the outskirts of a town known as Crowley, far from where the body was found. When he finds Ruth, she is between her home and the bar that the family owns. He gives her the bad news, and she is in complete shock, claiming not to know why Sam was in that small town. When Rutledge questions the other owners of the bar, he learns that his destination had been Shrewsbury. The bar is experiencing financial difficulties, so he was seeking out some of their creditors in the hopes of working out deals. With Ruth becoming quite distraught, he must rely on the information that others give him.

Rutledge learns that Sam and Ruth lost their daughter, Tildy, barely a year earlier, which set Ruth on a serious downward spiral. As he speaks with more people and follows up on every clue, he continues to get more pieces of a puzzle that do not fit. When he chats with the Milfords’ barrister, he clarifies that Tildy is literally “lost,” not deceased. Ruth lost her in a crowd, and their countless searches for her have been unproductive. It also develops that Sam had been in discussions with an orphanage to potentially adopt a child. Rutledge does not get a warm and fuzzy feeling from the woman handling the adoptions, but she does reveal that Sam is not Tildy’s birth father as he was still with the Bantams when she was conceived.

All the lies and stories now begin to narrow for Rutledge, and he gains some focus on what needs to be uncovered. If Sam was not Tildy’s dad, did the biological father have something to do with the abduction? Could this have been the person Sam went to see when he was killed? Was this the same soldier who the tailor saw Ruth with? As more murders are committed, we are left to wonder: What secret is so vital that it takes several lives to be permanently silenced over it? And what about Sam’s crazy sister, who claims that she had lost a young girl of her own, yet no one in her town ever saw this child?

A FATAL LIE is by far the most confounding case of Rutledge’s career, and readers will be just as frustrated as he is with each twist and turn. This is the type of classic-style mystery that we have grown to love from Charles Todd, and it never fails to deliver.