One other character has reappeared, much to our surprise, over many of the books. Olivia Marlowe, who wrote several volumes of war poetry as O. A. Manning, first appears in the second Rutledge novel, Wings of Fire. Our intention was to let her poems form the basis for Rutledge’s solution to the question of her guilt in a series of murders within the Marlowe family. Halfway through, we realized that readers must also read the poems for themselves. Oops. So we sat down and created her body of verse. O. A. Manning’s work continues to crop up unexpectedly—Rutledge has a tendency to quote her. We think he must have been half in love with her, though he never met her. Something about her, her poems (which he’d read in the trenches), touched him in a way that few women have—so far.

There’s someone we never meet who has a strong influence on Rutledge’s past—his former fiancée Jean, who was appalled at the scarecrow of a man who came back from France at the end of the war, broken in spirit. She ended their engagement and walked away. It’s some time before Rutledge can come to terms with this betrayal. Rutledge spent weeks in a clinic for shell shocked men before his sister discovered a doctor who could help him rather than condemn him to madness. But Dr. Fleming also demands something in return—he forces Rutledge to face Hamish. Searching for stability, Rutledge returns to the Yard, praying his skills have survived, but there’s the very real possibility that Hamish will be the stronger force in his mind. A Test of Wills is just that, Rutledge facing the challenge that Hamish presents. There is always the alternative of using his service revolver to end the struggle for both of them, but Rutledge is determined to fight for his sanity, and at the end of the novel learns whether he has won or lost his battle.

One other character of interest appeared first in A Long Shadow and returns in A Pale Horse. Meredith Channing is the widow of a soldier lost in France at about the same time Rutledge was forced to shoot Hamish. She was intended to have one small scene, but she didn’t take her cue and walk off stage left. But just what is her role? What connects her to Rutledge? At the end of A Matter of Justice, he turns to her in a moment of despair, and trusts her as he trusts few others.

Each book takes place a month or so after the last. June, 1919, for A Test of Wills, July for Wings of Fire, August for Search the Dark, and so on. Search the Dark finds him faced with a killer he doesn’t want to arrest. And that was an interesting game to consider, plotting it. The killer has very sound reasons for murder, and the victims aren’t sympathetic. They have played a decisive role in their own deaths, proving that not all victims are to be pitied in the same way.