An enjoyable, solidly paced escape.
The sound of bagpipes ushers in MacKinnon’s (The Comyn’s Curse, 2019) latest mystery, which features murder, drugs, centuries-old castles, romance—and a couple of ghosts.
The second volume in MacKinnon’s Highlands Spirits Series reconnects most of the cast from the opener. Detective Kate Bianchi of the Harrington, New Jersey, police force has just been assigned to a prestigious new task force investigating the rapid spread of a dangerous new hallucinogen called “Reign” (or “Regicide” in Europe). The drug is apparently being imported from somewhere in the Scottish Highlands. However, before Kate begins working on the case, she learns that her husband, Eddie, has died in a construction accident. She’s distraught and unfocused and put on temporary leave. Aubrey, one of Kate’s best friends, is now living in Scotland and engaged to Fionnlagh “Finn” Cameron, a history professor, part-time guide, and bagpipe enthusiast. Kate takes up residence at Aubrey’s friend Nessie’s rooming house in Inverness. In the same city, at her friend Angus’ bookshop, she meets the handsome, albeit scowling, Detective Investigator Jack MacDonald of the Scottish national police force, which is also working on the Reign enigma. Much to his consternation, Kate is added to his investigative team. So the adventure begins, mixing danger with an engaging lesson in Scottish history and culture—including a unique, running tutorial on bagpipes. When Aubrey, Finn, and Kate check out Dunebrae Castle as a possible honeymoon destination, the past and the present begin to intertwine—in ghostly fashion. The author effectively intersperses a mournful love story from 1644 with the suspenseful events of the current investigation. Along the way, MacKinnon drops perhaps a few too many breadcrumbs, and, as a result, readers are unlikely to be shocked when the villain is revealed. However, the author sufficiently keeps up the tension and the narrative pace, throwing in a few intriguing twists to keep the plot engaging. The text is also peppered with Scottish phrases (a glossary is included), and this adds to the charm of the characters and the atmospheric location.
An enjoyable, solidly paced escape.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-951490-08-9
Page Count: 344
Publisher: DartFrog Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 7, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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BOOK REVIEW
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.
Norwegian novelist Jacobsen folds a quietly powerful coming-of-age story into a rendition of daily life on one of Norway’s rural islands a hundred years ago in a novel that was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize.
Ingrid Barrøy, her father, Hans, mother, Maria, grandfather Martin, and slightly addled aunt Barbro are the owners and sole inhabitants of Barrøy Island, one of numerous small family-owned islands in an area of Norway barely touched by the outside world. The novel follows Ingrid from age 3 through a carefree early childhood of endless small chores, simple pleasures, and unquestioned familial love into her more ambivalent adolescence attending school off the island and becoming aware of the outside world, then finally into young womanhood when she must make difficult choices. Readers will share Ingrid’s adoration of her father, whose sense of responsibility conflicts with his romantic nature. He adores Maria, despite what he calls her “la-di-da” ways, and is devoted to Ingrid. Twice he finds work on the mainland for his sister, Barbro, but, afraid she’ll be unhappy, he brings her home both times. Rooted to the land where he farms and tied to the sea where he fishes, Hans struggles to maintain his family’s hardscrabble existence on an island where every repair is a struggle against the elements. But his efforts are Sisyphean. Life as a Barrøy on Barrøy remains precarious. Changes do occur in men’s and women’s roles, reflected in part by who gets a literal chair to sit on at meals, while world crises—a war, Sweden’s financial troubles—have unexpected impact. Yet the drama here occurs in small increments, season by season, following nature’s rhythm through deaths and births, moments of joy and deep sorrow. The translator’s decision to use roughly translated phrases in conversation—i.e., “Tha’s goen’ nohvar” for "You’re going nowhere")—slows the reading down at first but ends up drawing readers more deeply into the world of Barrøy and its prickly, intensely alive inhabitants.
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-77196-319-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Biblioasis
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
Doerr captures the sights and sounds of wartime and focuses, refreshingly, on the innate goodness of his major characters.
Doerr presents us with two intricate stories, both of which take place during World War II; late in the novel, inevitably, they intersect.
In August 1944, Marie-Laure LeBlanc is a blind 16-year-old living in the walled port city of Saint-Malo in Brittany and hoping to escape the effects of Allied bombing. D-Day took place two months earlier, and Cherbourg, Caen and Rennes have already been liberated. She’s taken refuge in this city with her great-uncle Etienne, at first a fairly frightening figure to her. Marie-Laure’s father was a locksmith and craftsman who made scale models of cities that Marie-Laure studied so she could travel around on her own. He also crafted clever and intricate boxes, within which treasures could be hidden. Parallel to the story of Marie-Laure we meet Werner and Jutta Pfennig, a brother and sister, both orphans who have been raised in the Children’s House outside Essen, in Germany. Through flashbacks we learn that Werner had been a curious and bright child who developed an obsession with radio transmitters and receivers, both in their infancies during this period. Eventually, Werner goes to a select technical school and then, at 18, into the Wehrmacht, where his technical aptitudes are recognized and he’s put on a team trying to track down illegal radio transmissions. Etienne and Marie-Laure are responsible for some of these transmissions, but Werner is intrigued since what she’s broadcasting is innocent—she shares her passion for Jules Verne by reading aloud 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. A further subplot involves Marie-Laure’s father’s having hidden a valuable diamond, one being tracked down by Reinhold von Rumpel, a relentless German sergeant-major.
Doerr captures the sights and sounds of wartime and focuses, refreshingly, on the innate goodness of his major characters.Pub Date: May 6, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4767-4658-6
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014
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