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THE KEEPER

Former Chicago cop Cal Hooper has fetched up in the Irish village of Ardnakelty, where he supplements his pension with woodworking and carpentry. This is the third novel in the series, but for newcomers, the cast list comprises:

Lena, his kind-of fiancée. She is a widow.
Noreen, her sister. She runs the village shop and is a one woman Greek chorus and general busybody.
Tommy Moynihan, a would-be big shot, manager of a local factory, rich but widely disliked.
His son Eugene, something in Dublin finance circles.
Rachel Holohan, his long time girlfriend.
Trey, a teenage girl, something of a wild child, informally adopted by Cal, whose natural daughter Alyssa still lives in America.
The drinkers at the Seán Óg pub. They are a diverse mix of farmers and strugglers, but unequivocally wedded to Ardnakelty and its heritage, for good or bad. 

We learn that all is not well between Rachel and Eugene. She is reported missing one night, and then Cal and other searchers find her body in the local river. Weeks pass before the authorities declare her death a suicide, through drinking antifreeze. Meanwhile, the village has become polarised with gossip and speculation, the fault line being suspicion of – or support for – the Moynihans.In the long dead days between Rachel Holohan’s death and her body being released for burial, Ardnakelty begins to twitch.

A better snapshot of a rural Irish wake you will not find:
“I’m starving, “Bobby says dolefully.
At a long table at the end of the room, a scrawny kid with an unconvincing mustache is ladling soup from a tureen into bowls for a line of the kind of old women who can’t be killed by anything short of a lightning strike.
Bobby eyes him wistfully.
‘I’d eat the hind leg off the lamb of God.”

At a hefty 400 plus pages this is no crime caper throwaway. Tana French uses the time and space to plant a seed of suspicion beneath the turf of Ardnakelty. The seed germinates, puts out roots, and then produces the flowers which Baudelaire called Fleurs de Mal. As Rachel is laid to rest, the parish priest cannot resist a biblical reference to the evil of suicide, while the Moynihans and Rachel’s family sit, pointedly, on opposite sides of the church.

The enigmatic Trey thinks that the antifreeze suicide makes no sense; Lena has told no-one about the night Rachel visited her, ostensibly to ask for Lena’s veterinary advice about her cat, but actually – and tearfully – wanting someone to talk to. In an effort to find out what is going on, as tensions increase, Lena goes to see Noreen”s mother in law, who seems to know all and see all, despite never leaving the house:

“At the heart of it all is Mrs. Duggan, vast and formless, in a magenta dress, coated with swirls of tiny magenta beads, like one of those underwater creatures that lie wide-mouthed on the seabed, waiting to receive anyone and anything that comes their way.”

As opinions in Ardnakelty polarise between the pro and anti Moynihan camps, Tana French gives us a magnificent pub brawl which (old movie buffs, pay attention) might have been orchestrated by John Ford, with John Wayne and Victor McLaglen in full flight.

Despite his being an outsider and a former Chicago cop, Cal feels connected:

“Cal doesn’t know how to find words for what he means.The things he’s come to prize in this place are not, mostly, the ones he moved here in search of.The beauty is all there and more, but he was also picturing simplicity and peace, maybe even innocence, none of which showed up in any noticeable quantity.Instead, he’s found the intricate webs constructed over centuries that bind people to one another, to their land and to their past.He’s under no illusion that these bindings are simple or innocent either.They’ve sliced people to the bone, scourged them out of town, choked them to death. But alongside all that, they’ve held the place together, steadfast in the face of time, dark happenings, rifts, attacks, and sieges.”

This is a brilliant and addictive crime novel and a rather superior whodunnit, but it is so much more. Tana French’s portrait of small town rural Ireland, with its gossip, linguistic quirks, petty jealousies, long-held grudges and its ambiguous relationship with the land and its climate reveals in words what Rembrandt brought to life with brush strokes. I have never set foot in Ireland, so I cannot say if her version is accurate. What I do know is that no contemporary English writer does the same thing for our villages and small towns. We are, of course, a very crowded and compact country and much more in thrall to globalist media influence, so perhaps the comparison is unfair. In the end, good triumphs – after a fashion. Tommy Moynihan is stopped in his tracks, but not before a good man dies. The Keeper will be published by Viking on 2nd April.

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REAPER . . . Between the covers

New Zealand’s long standing Queen of Crime is, of course, Ngaio Marsh, but her trademark Inspector Alleyn novels were mostly set in England, apart from four where Alleyn is seconded to New Zealand. Vanda Symon, in contrast, sets her novels resolutely ‘at home’. I thoroughly enjoyed Prey (2024) which was set in Dunedin.

Here, Symon takes us the the capital city. We quickly learn that Max Grimes is a former Auckland police officer, now living rough, but with a day job as a cleaner. The circumstances surrounding his apparent downfall unfold as the story progresses. The titular Reaper has decided that his life mission is to rid the city streets of those he views as bottom feeders – the vagrants, the alcoholics, and vulnerable people who live in shop doorways and empty properties. People like Max, then? Well, perhaps not. Vanda Symon’s first task is to convince us that Max is tough and resilient enough – despite his reduced circumstances – to tackle a serial killer.

Homeless sleuths need some form of contact with and co-operation with the regular police, and for Max Grimes, this comes in the shape of DS Meredith Peters, an astute and resourceful officer, but one acutely aware of the residual misogyny not just in the police force, but in city politics.There is a parallel plot. Experienced readers know that these lines often converge, but for now, here it is: we learn that Max’s daughter was murdered by her drug-addled boyfriend, who subsequently took his own life. When Shane McFarlane, the boy’s father, approaches Max and asks him to trace the dealer whose product effectively killed both of their children, Max’s initial reaction is repulsion and a rude refusal. Later, he reconsiders, and agrees to help.

The Reaper is given sporadic third person narratives to himself, so we know exactly what he is up to, well before Max and the police do. He shoots dead a former chemistry teacher and successful crystal meth cook named Gary Cochrane, and it is Cochrane who pulls the two parallel plot lines together, much to the detriment of Max Grimes, who has had a bruising recent encounter with Cochrane in his search for the dealer who has caused him so much pain.

Vanda Symon cleverly emphasises Grimes’s physical vulnerability here, as she realises that a Reacher-like superhero is an unlikely fit for her man. I did wonder, however, about Max having a constantly charged and fully paid-up smartphone, despite his abject poverty, but hey ho, it’s crime fiction. When Max is framed for the shooting of Cochrane and arrested, at least he has a roof over his head but, mentally, he is in a very dark place.

The idea of a homeless solver of crimes is certainly not new. Trevor Wood introduced to his sleuth Jimmy Mullen in The Man on the Street, and followed up with One Way Street and Dead End Street. Is the concept plausible? Probably not, but then this particular reviewer must constantly remind himself that he is dealing with crime fiction. Readers want to be absorbed, intrigued and entertained; Vanda Symon emphatically ticks all three boxes. She has given us an ingenious plot which leads to a (literally) searing finale. Reaper is published by Orenda books and is available now.

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THE DANGEROUS STRANGER . . . Between the covers

This is the latest outing for British CriFi’s most unlikely partnership – Wilkins and Wilkins. Detective Inspector Ryan, of that kin is scruffy and, to be blunt, dresses and talks like a chav (remember them?) His partner Ray is Nigerian – London, handsome, public school educated, urbane and, before he was paired with Ryan, a rising star of Thames Valley police. They are based on Oxford. The book begins, however, in London, where an ageing criminal, known, as Dogs, is hunted down by a violent former associate called Head Hunter, and forced to take on another job.

An emergency call sends the Ws out to a budget hotel, now housing asylum seekers. An angry mob of locals, incensed by the recent murder of a local girl by an apparent immigrant, is laying siege to the property and, amid the chaos, a young African man is murdered while trying to escape the hotel. What this has to do with the events in London remains to be seen. To add to the already fraught relationship between Ryan and Ray, the Superintendent attaches a young Detective Constable, William Huber to the Ws team. He is unlikely to gel with Ryan, as William is a ‘posh boy’, enthusiastic, earnest and plummy of voice. The Ws have home lives that seem different, but neither resembles any kind of utopia. Ray is, as they say, ‘happily’ married, but life with wife Diane and their twin sons is frequently fractious. She is a professional woman, and is determined that Ray do more than his hair share of parenting, in spite of his unpredictable working hours. Ryan lives alone in a seedy rented flat, while his four year old son is brought up by his sister. He tries to be a good dad but, again, his job and what it sucks out of him, make him an imperfect father.

As the case progresses, it transpires that the man killed in the hotel protest may have been a wealthy and well connected French citizen but, clearly some things simply do not add up. The case takes a grim turn when a twelve year-old boy who attended the riot with his father is found to have concealed a knife and an empty canister under his bed. Hidden with them is his mobile ‘phone, on which is a video of the burning man. The two big questions are: what was the Frenchman doing in the asylum hotel, and what became of the migrant for whom he was mistaken? Further grit is thrown into than less than well-oiled mechanism of the investigative team by the arrival of a prominent French police officer to “help” with enquiries. As the story progresses, Simon Mason leaks clues into the narrative, a drop or two at a team, as to the connection between Oxford and the world of Dogs and Head Hunter.

Mason endows Dogs with a noirish quality as if he had just walked in from the streets of one of Derek Raymond’s ‘Factory’ novels.

“Really, he was only happy in London. Old Rotherhithe, those shabby, mean places of his youth.He was shabby and mean himself and always would be, thank God. All his life he’d lived in the weeds; he resented it and loved it, they were his weeds. It was the way he was made.”

Ray has his demons, but on Ryan’s back is the terrifying specter of his abusive father, now a broken man in an ex-offender’s institution.

“He thought of the person his father had become, a pathetic figure, shrunk and feeble, sick-looking, an animal that needs putting down.But buried very deep in Ryan, like a disgusting secret, was something he didn’t understand and couldn’t bear to think about: he was still frightened of this person.”

The joy of crime fiction is that its best writers make us believe in the improbable. Mason presents us with Ryan Wilkins, in his scuffed trainers and awful trackies, forever twitching with facial tics caused by God knows what family history. He is off the social scale in terms of lifestyle. His clapped-out Peugeot is always on the cusp of breakdown, and how he maintains the trust of his little son is little short of miraculous. And yet, and yet. He has instincts and insights that his more ‘civilised’ partner Ray can only dream of. I don’t want this series to end but, going forward, could Ryan ever mature into a seasoned institutional copper. What would he be like aged 50? Thankfully, that is a conundrum to which I will not have to provide a solution. The Dangerous Stranger is an absolute peach of a crime novel, and will be be published by Quercus on 12th February.

For my thoughts on previous Ryan Wilkins mysteries, click this link.

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DEAD HEAT . . . Between the covers

For Matt Grimshaw, everything has suddenly become rather ‘former’. Thanks to being sacked by his long-term employer, he is now a former journalist, and Takara is now his former lover, he having discovered her cavorting with a colleague in his London flat. Adam and Celia, a well-off media couple, are still his friends, however, and they have given him the key to the cottage next to their villa on the Mani Peninsula, part of the ancient kingdom of Sparta.

Matt spends a few days on his own there before Adam, Celia, their teenage daughter Lydia and her friend Jasmine arrive. Adam is disconcerted that across the bay a former abandoned folly, Arcadia, has been converted into a luxury compound by a tech billionaire called Reynash de Souza. The problem is that Adam and de Souza have, as they say, history. When de Souza throws a party for all the neighbourhood, what Dylan called ‘a simple twist of fate’ intervenes and turns the azure Aegean into something far, far darker.

In the background is a missing person, a man called Marc Ashley, a guest at de Souza’s Arcadia. One morning, he set out for a run and never came back. His sister Sarah is desperately trying to find him by a leafleting campaign and organising volunteer search parties.At the heart of the story is the relationship between Matt and Adam. Matt is a talented writer, but insecure and, perhaps, too sensitive to the needs of others. His emotional antennae are fine-wired, but to his own detrimental. Adam is, to use the old word, a cad. Charming, persuasive, charismatic even, he uses people. One such is a young woman called Amira, a former intern at Adam’s production company. He seduced her and is subsequently horrified when she turns up at de Souza’s mansion. She blackmails him, and Matt, ever loyal, agrees to be part of the deception involving a pay-off that will deceive Celia.

The book begins with one of those enigmatic prologues, date stamped well after the events of the main story. A man sits in a Greek court, watching a prisoner being sentenced. Sabine Durrant drops a fairly hefty hint that the observer is Matt Grimshaw, but who is the convicted man? Sabine Durrant not only deftly recreates the enervating physical climate, but makes us sweat in the oppressive emotional climate created by infidelity, old sins returning to haunt the perpetrator, and dangerous atmosphere caused by money mixed with power. Dead Heat is an immersive mystery beautifully woven with the threads of cruelty, revenge and deceit. It will be published by Century on 12th March.

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IF A FACE COULD KILL . . . Between the covers

Brigid Quinn is a former FBI agent. She and her husband Carlo have retired to the rural community of Catalina in Arizona. At the end of their street is a property used by the authorities to house paroled offenders, one whom is a woman called Nicki, who went down for manslaughter after killing her abusive husband. The book begins with a botched burglary at this group house, which ends when the hapless was shot dead by a SWAT team after they were alerted by a 911 call from Nicki.After she retired from the FBI Brigid volunteered at Desert Doves, a refuge for victims of domestic violence, which is where she met the traumatised Nicki Gleason. There, she taught Nicki the basics of self defence, and it was that knowledge which resulted in jury foreman stating:

“We find Nicole Gleason guilty of one count of involuntary manslaughter, your Honor.”

One of Brigid’s neighbours, an unpleasant busybody called Dorita, is organising a petition to have the occupants housed elsewhere. Dorita is as unpleasant looking as her behaviour is ugly:

“It struck me that her large face wasn’t so much like the Red Queen’s as like a painting of Martin Luther..”

Dorita and Brigid are destined not to get on well together, but the neighbourhood spat ends violently when Dorita is found dead in her garden. It seems as though she has been held down in a barbecue fire pit. Face down. The result is graphically not pretty, but then there are few beautiful people in this novel.
This is Nikki’s probation officer/mentor:

“She was the ugliest butterfly you’d ever seen, startlingly ugly. She didn’t have a moustache, but it wouldn’t have surprised me.A long, gaunt face with uncooked dumplings under her eyes to make up for the lack of flesh elsewhere. Her lipstick appeared to be a gallant attempt at redeeming her face, but even that failed as the shade contrasted severely with the colors in her top. An overbite. That was my three-second observation, but I don’t think I’m missing anything.”

For those who enjoy such things, we witness the exquisitely grisly autopsy on poor Dorita Gordano. She was killed by blunt force trauma to the face, and a gasoline soaked plug of rag was forced into her throat. The facial burning was clearly post mortem, and some kind of statement. But of what, and by whom? Neither does Becky Masterman spare us the details of what a vile specimen Nicki’s husband was. Vincent was obsessed with video games to the extent that one afternoon, anxious to get to his games console, he left daughter Ramona strapped into her car seat one blazing Arizona afternoon. He was also casually brutal about where he stubbed out his cigarettes. There is, obviously, a broader moral argument about whether such men deserve to be killed with a two litre vodka bottle, but this book is crime fiction, not a philosophical treatise, so we can roll with it.

After some humming and hahing, the local police, led by Sheriff Max Coyote, a former friend of Brigid’s (they have fallen out, big time) decide that Nicki is a person of interest in the murder of Dorita Gordano. The pathologist believes that the initial injuries to Dorita’s face were caused by a large concrete block, and in the garden of the group house is a recently built wall. And one of the concrete blocks bears blood traces.

Masterman’s prose is as sharp as tacks. Sometimes, American CriFi can be too slick, too polished, and too predictable. Quinn’s observations are frequently acerbic, and scatter broken glass for us to tread on. Here, she catches the over-effusive Eleanore Turner in an unguarded moment.

“She looked like hell. She tried to sit up straighter and force the corners of her mouth into her standard smile, but the corners twitched with the effort, like those of a politician being asked the one question they could not answer. None of it worked. She was smaller than I’d seen her in our last several encounters, some giant thumb pressing down on her for too long, and she could no longer resist.”

The action accelerates. First, someone firebombs the group home, and one of the residents, a young man called Jackson is killed in the resultant explosion. Then, a local Home Owners Association meeting is called and, despite Max Coyote trying to reassure residents, the mood turns ugly. Brigid’s rather strange niece Gemma Kate is attacked as she sits watching a horror movie in a theatre where she and her attacker are the only customers.

There is a narrative shift late in the book. Hitherto, everything we have read is through the eyes of Brigid. Then, quite abruptly, we have a chapter describing the thoughts of Nicki Gleason, followed by those of Eleanore, abducted and imprisoned in a locked casita. Becky Masterman ends the novel with horror and violence, but also redemption. It is certainly a visceral read. If a Face Could Kill will be published by Severn House on 3rd March.

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SHARKS . . . Between the covers

In April 2024 I reviewed The Kitchen (same author, same central character) and I was impressed. If you click the title, you can read why. Now, Hamburg prosecutor Chastity Riley returns, and we are wading through gore from page one, as Fraulein Riley views the bodies of an elderly American couple – Walt and Lorraine Tucker – in their run-down villa in the suburb of Wilhemsburg. The book blurb describes the district as troubled, while an AI response on Google says it is “no longer considered “rough” in the sense of being dangerous, but rather in the sense of being an “up-and-coming” edgy, urban, and authentic district”. I think I trust Simone Buchholz rather than corporate PR-speak.

“All I see is a muddle of ghetto and nature. I see run down tower blocks, gloomy pubs, grey streets, and growing right next to them are birch birch trees and willows and rose bushes. Sometimes there’s a little canal or a meadow.There are even old farms a bit further from the S-Bahn tracks. I get the idea things could be really nice here. But it doesn’t work.The problem is this part of town has problems and its emotional core is dreariness.There’s no new dawn in the air.There’s a rot, a lack of prospects. Abandon hope all ye who enter here. Flee while you have the chance. And the only people who come here are those who can’t afford anything else, or not anymore. People don’t look like they’re here of their own free will.”

Near the Tuckers’ house is the Rote Flora, something of a Hamburg institution. A former theatre, it has been occupied since 1989 by alternative-lifestyle squatters, and some of them tell Chastity that Tucker hated them with a vengeance, and never lost an opportunity to be offensive towards them.Genuine Noir is about despair. It is about people living on the edge. Here, Chastity’s old chum, Haller, describes a woman he has met while (unofficially) investigating the Tucker murders.

“She told me that since her husband died, she’s been going for walks. For seven years, she’s been walking 16, 18, 20 hours a day. She only goes home to sleep. But she says she doesn’t sleep all that much anymore. Sometimes she doesn’t sleep at all. She thinks she’ll die sooner if she stops going for walks and starts sleeping. When she said that, I thought, she’s sly. She’s running away from death.”

It is through this little old lady that the break comes. On one of her endless walks she spotted two men leaving the Tucker house and driving away in an old Ford Taunus, a gold one. Presented with, first, a photofit, and then a subsequent ID parade, she picks out two ‘guns for hire’ called Caltzo and Rubsch. But who has done the hiring?

Commenting on the style of a translated novel is something of a leap of faith, but we have to trust Rachel Ward. Buchholz punches the narrative forward with short sentences, often containing fewer than a dozen words. Even when Chastity is thinking about her past, pondering ‘what ifs’ or speculating on the future, there is still a powerful sense of immediacy, and the forward movement barely falters. A word of advice. Unless you are German speaker, or know Hamburg, you will need your ‘phone at hand, and Google primed to go. Buchholz peppers the narrative with Hamburg cultural references. For example, Chastity meets her former colleague, the recently retired Haller, in a bar called The Haifisch. Apparently, ‘Haifisch’ was a hit for the German band Rammstein, but it also translates as ‘shark’.

Buchholz keeps the mood relentlessly downbeat. Riley’s BFF Carla has to have a termination. They go together to the clinic and, waiting outside while Carla recovers, Riley observes the day:

“The sky has spread over the city like a blanket, or maybe like a lid. In Hamburg, you can never be certain what the day is going to make of it. Sometimes a low-hanging sky like that seems almost comforting, loving, lulling. And sometimes it just eats everything up. The only thing you can be sure of is that it’s not lightening up again today.”

I am not sure if Noir novels can sparkle, but this one does – with snappy dialogue, vivid locations – and a brilliant solution to the murder. Sharks is published by Orenda Books and is out now.

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THE MEADOWS OF MURDER . . . Between the covers

I confess to being a devoted fan of medieval mysteries. I think it started with The White Company. Though clearly not a crime novel, that book triggered my interest in the period and it’s people. Since then, we have had Ellis Peters, Umberto Eco and Sarah Hawksworth, to name but three. I am new to Paul Doherty’s Brother Athelstan books, but was not disappointed by The Meadows of Murder. We are in late 14th century London, Athelstan is priest of St Erconwald’s church, and on the north bank of the Thames, the bodies of those executed for their role in the recently crushed Peasant’s Revolt are hanging rotting from their gibbets. The prologue explains the complex political situation of the day: the King, Richard II, is little more than a boy; John of Gaunt is locked in conflict with the powerful guildsmen of London, while powerful figures like Richard’s mother Joan, conspire behind the scenes. The country is still struggling from devastating effects of The Black Death.

This is no softly tinted golden account of a fondly imagined medieval England. It is full of dark corners and harsh realities. Members of a London Guild who were guilty of what is best described as a group rape of a Spanish entertainer are being murdered, one by one. A terminally Ill craftsman has sought sanctuary in Athelstan’s church for murdering a Jewish moneylender. London’s streets are dangerous places, violent and foul with sewage. Somehow, Athelstan rides the storm, helped by a mixture of his own resolute faith and the strength of his personality.

Athelstan and his friend Sir John Cranston, the Lord Hugh Coroner of London, are drawn to St Osyth’s Priory on the north bank of the Thames. It was there, that Massimo Servini, the abused Spaniard, was taken to die. The Priory has its own mysteries. Why the previous Abbess and Prioress disappear, one with a quantity of stolen treasure? Why is Thibault, the Queen Mother’s confidante ever present? And is Adam the Anchorite actually the brain damaged fool he appears to be, or is his imbecility a cloak masking something far more sinister?

There are touches of wry humour. Athelstan’s parishioners are certainly a peculiar bunch. He has summoned them to the church.

“He glared and he stared, managing his anger, but also counting heads and remembering faces. Watkin, the Dung collector, his nephew, Michael the Minstrel, Pike the Ditcher, Ranulph, the Rat Ctcher, with his two caged ferrets, Ferox and Audax, the Hangman of Rochester, Crispin, the Carpenter, Jocelyn, the Tavern Master, and all the rest of the motley crew.”

Looming over the narrative is the immense figure of John of Gaunt. The third son of Edward III, denied the crown by primogeniture, he was still an immense political figure. Best remembered today for the memorable speech Shakespeare put into his mouth in Richard II, he nevertheless was – briefly, and by marriage – king of the ancient Spanish kingdom of Castile. His son was crowned Henry IV in 1399. The animosity between him and the London Guilds is a key part of this tale. His name? He was born in the Flemish city of Ghent, now Gand. Paul Doherty (via the perception and acuity of Athelstan) raises the concept of what were called ‘by-blow’ progeny, – children not legitimised by marriage. Men like John of Gaunt could have numerous bastard offspring, and it was seen as nothing more than a testament to their virility, but for women of noble birth it was another matter altogether.

The key to the mystery lies at St Osyth’s, both above and beneath the ground. Athelstan uncovers a fatal network of allegiances and grievances that has caused many deaths. The humble priest’s ability to move effortlessly between Court, Cloister and Commons is rather implausible, but Paul Doherty has given us a compulsive read, full of larger-than-life characters, set against an impeccably researched portrait of mid-14thC London. The Meadows of Murder will be published by Severn House on 6th January.

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DEATH ON SKYE . . . Between the covers

Aline Templeton sets up her stage with admirable directness, and wastes no time introducing us to the characters in her drama. Human Face is (or purports to be) a refugee charity. It has relocated from the south of England to a gloomy Victorian property on Skye and its director, Adam Carnegie is, we soon learn, a wrong ‘un. Beatrice Lacey, a wealthy but emotionally needy supporter of Human Face, had allowed her Surrey home to be used by the charity and is uneasy in its new location, but is in thrall to the messianic Carnegie.

A young woman called Eve is the latest in a series of ‘housekeepers’ at Balnashiel Lodge, and had been promised a British National Insurance number if she behaves herself. Vicky Macdonald, despite marrying a local man, is still regarded as a Sassenach. She does the actual housekeeping at the Lodge.

PC Livvy Murray has been exiled to Skye after being duped by a childhood friend who had been leading a double life in in serious crime. Now, she is stuck in a damp and draughty police house, with her career more or less over before it has started. Kelso Strang is a recently bereaved Edinburgh police officer. He is ex-military, and the son of a Major General. His decision to become a copper has resulted in a huge rift between him and his father.

When Eve is reported missing, Livvy Murray can find nothing suspicious, but refers the matter to her bosses on the mainland. Strang’s boss, seeking to divert him from the trauma of the recent death of his wife in a road accident, sends him up to Skye to investigate.

Aline Templeton has a certain amount of wicked fun at the expense of the unfortunate Beatrice, with her plastic pretend baby, the industrial quantities of chocolate bars she has stashed at strategic points throughout the lodge, and her desperate gullibility. Almost exactly half way through the book, the narrative (which has been ambling along pleasantly enough) explodes into violence, and takes an unexpected turn.

This is the first of a six book series, with an unusual publishing history. All six have appeared between the date of this, 25th August 2025, and the sixth – Death on The Black Isle – on 25th November 2025. Joffe Publishing clearly has a strategy, and I hope it works for them, but is this book any good? Short answer is yes, it’s very readable. The Skye setting is suitably bleak and tempestuous, and the description of the charity scammers rings all too true in a world where ostensibly reputable charities pay obscene amounts of donors’ money to their executives and their TV advertisers.

Were one to summon all the fictional British Detective Inspectors to a convention, the meeting pace would need to be very spacious, and the catering arrangements complex, so does Kelso Strang have sharp enough elbows to make a space for himself? Again, yes. We have come to expect our DIs to be charismatic, damaged and driven, and Strang certainly ticks all three boxes. Death On Skye is available now.

 

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MYSTERY IN WHITE . . . Between the covers

Largely forgotten now, Joseph Jefferson Farjeon was a dramatist and novelist who died in 1955. His reputation has perhaps been eclipsed by that of his sister Eleanor. Coming at the tail end of The Golden Age, Mystery In White was published in 1937. Another book which begins in the snow, The Nine Tailors, came out three years earlier, but that is where the resemblance ends. Wimsey and Bunter’s misadventure in a snow-filled Fenland ditch moves on quite quickly, and covers a much longer period of time.

Here, the 11.37 train from Euston ends up stationary, the line blocked by snow. In one compartment are a variety hall dancer bound for Manchester, a middle class brother and sister named David and Lydia, a rather gauche clerk called Thomson, an old colonial hand referred to only as ‘the bore’, and an older man, Edward Maltby, who claims to be a psychic researcher. He is heading for Naseby, where he hopes to commune with the spirit of King Charles I. Not that it matters, but examining the route of the old LMS line, we might assume that the action takes place somewhere in Bedfordshire.

The beleaguered train guard can offer little hope of quick deliverance for the stranded passengers, and Maltby takes – literally – a bold step, and jumps down from the carriage, stating he will find his way to the nearest village. The others, after a while and quite implausibly, decide to follow him, and after several misadventures in the drifts, arrive at an isolated house, with an unlocked door. Inside is a puzzle, inside a mystery, inside an enigma. A kettle is merrily boiling away on the stove, as if in anticipation of a brew of tea, but the house is, as far as the group can see, unoccupied.

The escapees from the train are busy dusting themselves down and thawing out, when Edward Maltby arrives, in the company of a rough stranger, who soon leaves. Then, the bore from the train, named Hopkins, also arrives and informs the group that in the next compartment* of the carriage, a man has been found dead.

*Back in the day, railway carriages consisted of a number of separate compartments, designed to seat perhaps seven or eight people. Along the right (or left) side of the carriage ran a corridor, and each compartment had a door which opened into it.

The plot develops at pace. The loutish cockney, Smith, who first arrived with Maltby has left, returned and then left again after provoking a one-sided fight with the bore, who we now now is called Hopkins. Young Thomson was sent to bed with a high temperature, but after alarming dreams, got up in a daze, but has now been brought downstairs. The dancer, Lucie Noyes, had injured her foot in a fall, and was also packed off to bed to rest. She has disturbing thoughts about the bed, however, as it seems to have a certain ‘presence’ which is not altogether pleasant, and she took is now downstairs. Meanwhile Maltby has assumed the role of a kind of Magus, and is making enigmatic statements about the psychic dangers of the building. On a more practical note, a letter was discovered which partly explains the open door and tea being laid. A servant had been looking after the house, and was expecting visitors, but of the retainer and the guests there is no sign.

This changes when David decides to go out into the night and look around. Eventually, he finds a young woman wandering about in the snow. She tells him she is Nora Strange, and that she and her elderly father were trying to drive to Valley House. The car became stuck in a drift. David quickly surmises that they were heading for ‘the house’ itself, and the trio make their way back there.

The human story behind the seemingly inexplicable mystery is revealed in a kind of seance in the small hours of Christmas Day. It is not a seance in the accepted sense,as Maltby later explains:

“We hatch ghosts in our own minds out of the logic that is beyond us. Logic, through science, may one day recapture the sounds of the Battle of Hastings, but this will not mean that the battle is still going on. Believe me, Mr. Hopkins, there are quite enough astounding, uncanny, mind-shattering experiences within the boundaries of sheer logic to eliminate the necessity of ghosts for our explanations or our thrills. We are only touching the fringe of these things. We have only touched the fringe of them in this house.”

This is a book of huge charm. The style and dialogue are, inevitably, of their time, but they only add to the magic combination of snow, mystery, Christmas, and, dare I say it, happier times. The novel was republished as a British Library Crime Classic in October of this year.

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