Another murder mystery involving sailor Cass Taylor and her policeman boyfriend Gavin. Cass is on shore for once, preparing for Christmas with Gavin, Cat and Kitten, when mysterious footprints appear outside their remote cottage: 'Trows' (Shetland fairies) are traditionally active at this time of year. But is this a prank, and how is it linked to the controversial wind turbines being built?
Then a young boy disappears, possibly one of the prankers ...
What makes this series of whodunnits exceptional is that Marsali Taylor is more and more able to take time with her stories. Much of it is about Shetland's preparations for Christmas and the momentary difficulties experienced by Cass and Gavin as they navigate the early waters of living together, and on land. This is allied to a careful exploration of the relevant characters who are so well-developed that I felt apprehensive about their possible fates. The depth and texture of the story is further enhanced by the (fully explained) use of Shetland vocabulary (eg "She was in a right ammerswak. The goddess poise was gone. She was wearing the pinnie she’d worn yesterday, but the buttons were done up squint."; Ch 8) and by some superb pieces of description of the Shetland countryside:
- "There had been an intense frost during the night. The orange-brown kelp on the shore was crinkled white with ice, and there was a glaze of ice in the curve by the point where the burn ran down." (Ch 7)
- "It came on a serious shower of snow as we hit the main road. The windscreen wipers quickened to double speed, flack, flack, and still there was snow running down the window, as if we’d caught a foaming wave going over us. The tyres hissed through pools of water on the salted road, but the ditches at each side were white with snow lying on frozen water." (Ch 18)
I want to go there (maybe not in winter).
In short, it is a good little murder mystery in the classic style, but books of this quality transcend the genre.
Selected quotes:
- "I woke to the rattle of the kitchen Rayburn being riddled, followed by the clank of an ashbucket and the crackling of flames in kindling." (Ch 2)
- "She was a tortoiseshell, with a coat the colours of several different spice jars shaken together over a worktop." (Ch 2)
- "It wasn’t much after two, I reckoned, yet already the air was beginning to thicken at the sides of buildings, and the sky was darkening." (Ch 5)
- "His voice softened to the gentle note of a drummie bee drowsing round flowers in summer." (Ch 6)
- "The downward-angled streetlights lit the frost hanging in the air like spotlights in a theatre" (Ch 12)
- "Motive: love, lucre, loathing." (Ch 18)
- "I have a cousin in Canada who’s so like me that we could use each other to shave by." (Ch 26)
This is a crime fiction series that gets better and better. The books, in order, are:
- Death on a Longship
- The Trowie Mound Murders
- A Handful of Ash
- The Body in the Bracken
- Ghosts of the Vikings
- Death in Shetland Waters
- Death on a Shetland Isle
- Death from a Shetland Cliff
- The Shetland Sea Murders
January 2022
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