"Footsteps in the Dew" by Marsali Taylor

 

A historical murder mystery set in an exciting period of Viking history.

1150. Shetland. Rannveig, the eldest daughter, has taken the place of her dead mother helping her father run their small farm with sidelines in fishing and pottery. A stranger is found dead in a nearby stone circle. Clues include a footprint and a bead from a broken necklace. Whodunnit? Members of the old paganism, still celebrating Thor even though the country is supposedly pagan? Or was the stranger a spy for one of the three kings who rule Norway in a supposedly harmonious triumvirate? And why was silver stolen from father's hiding place and then put back? 

Rannveig's investigation progresses against a background of Vikings and crusaders. The setting is perfect and includes such archaic processes of justice as the ordeal by bier-right - when the dead man's body is wrapped in white cloth and laid in the church and each man from the locality must in turn place his hand on the body and swear his innocence and the body is watched to see whether it will bleed indicating guilt - and the steeple run in which a man and his accuser must race for the steeple and the first one to touch it is innocent and the loser is hanged but the kinsfolk and friends of either man can impede either runner. 

It's a story which is full of local colour and it also contains the Marsali Taylor trademark pitch-perfect descriptions:

• "The grassy hill sparkled with morning dew ... as if an angel had sprinkled curled shavings of silver over the green blades." (Ch 1)
• "The amber sun shone on the shorn field, strengthening the hay, sealing the goodness in." (Ch 4) 'Shone on the shorn', what wonderful assonance!
• "The turning point between summer and winter was haustblót, the great harvest feast, held three weeks after the autumn equinox, as the dark ate away at the daylight, and the hills turned from their royal purple to rusted pink. On the lower ground, the marsh grass darkened to olive, and the bog asphodel made patches of burnt orange among the bleaching grasses. The wild geese creaked overhead, dark wings spread against the pale sky." (Ch 4) Not only a description from which a painter could create a painting, but also the dark eating the daylight and the geese creaking overhead. Wow!
• "Rannveig was reminded of the way he had walked up the hill after they had told him Midder was dead, as if his feet were too heavy to life." (Ch 9)

I thoroughly enjoyed this murder mystery which reminded me of childhood favourites such as The Woolpack by Cynthia Harnett and the Henry Treece series of Viking books including Viking's Dawn, The Road to Miklagard, and Viking's Sunset. 

Marsali Taylor is also the author of the Shetland Sailing Mysteries, a series of murder mysteries starring intrepid sailor and amateur investigator Cass Lynch. The series so far is:

• Death on a Shetland Longship
• The Trowie Mound Murders (Buried in a Shetland Tomb)
• A Handful of Ash (The Shetland Night Killings)
• The Body in the Bracken (Grave of a Shetland Sailor)
• Ghosts of the Vikings (The Shetland Poisonings)
• Death in Shetland Waters
• Death on a Shetland Isle
• Death from a Shetland Cliff
• The Shetland Sea Murders
• A Shetland Winter Mystery
• Death in a Shetland Lane
• Death at a Shetland Festival

May 2025, 135 pages

This novel was originally written in 2015, serialised in the magazine Shetland Life.

My paperback edition was issued in 2020

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God