THE GOLDENACRE

Mystery swirls around a painting about to be transferred from the family who inherited it to Edinburgh’s Public Gallery.

Thomas Tallis, no relation to the English Renaissance composer and barely any to his own eminent wife, classical pianist Astrella Nemours, or his equally eminent father, Sir Raymond T. Tallis, retired director of MI6, has come to Edinburgh’s Public Gallery from London’s Civic Gallery, which he left under the cloud of an undisclosed scandal. His first task is to confirm the provenance of The Goldenacre, a large, splendid watercolor Charles Rennie Mackintosh painted nearly a hundred years ago. But there are mysterious obstacles in the way of this routine task. First, Olivia and Felix Farquharson, the aristocratic twins who own the painting, don’t want conservator Roberta Donnelly to accompany Tallis on his visit to inspect the painting; then, when the two of them make the trip to the Farquharsons’ Denholm House, the painting suddenly turns out to be unavailable because it’s getting some last-minute cleaning. As Tallis struggles to establish a toehold in the Public Gallery, senior reporter Shona Sandison is struggling to maintain her perch at the Edinburgh Post in the light of the layoffs bound to follow new editor Ron Ingleton’s appointment. The murder of painter Robert Love, the disturbingly similar murder of Edinburgh City Councillor John Cullen, and the fire that destroys the Mackintosh Building at the Glasgow School of Art encourage her to keep asking questions that inevitably lead her to Tallis, who’s meanwhile received a package containing a severed tongue.

A promising, tear-stained debut longer on suspense than surprise.