A False Mirror

A False Mirror sends Rutledge to a small coastal town in 1920 where a man has been savagely beaten and left for dead, with his wife's jilted former lover, a soldier Rutledge served with in France, as the prime suspect. The case stirs memories Rutledge cannot afford to revisit, connecting the violent triangle before him to his own lost love and the decisions the war forced on them all.

Samuel Gillies narrates with the careful introspection that Todd's series demands, giving Rutledge's internal conflict the space it needs without slowing the investigation's momentum. The coastal setting, with its cold harbor and tight community, comes through in Gillies's deliberate pacing, and the novel's psychological depth, which elevates it above a conventional mystery, benefits from a voice that treats the emotional material as seriously as the procedural.