A COLD HIGHLAND WIND
by Tasha Alexander
A trip to the Scottish Highlands provides another crime-solving opportunity for a pair of aristocratic sleuths in 1905.
The beauty of the Highlands has always appealed to Lady Emily Hargreaves. So she; her husband, Colin; their twin sons, Richard and Henry; and their ward, Tom, are delighted to accept an invitation to Cairnfarn Castle from their dearest friend, Jeremy Sheffield, Duke of Bainbridge. The village is hosting a ceilidh to welcome Dr. Genevieve Harris, that rara avis at the time, a woman doctor, who’s replacing the retiring Dr. William Cameron. The people are friendly and the party fun, but the following day the boys stumble on the body of Angus Sinclair, Jeremy’s gamekeeper. There’s something of a mystery about Sinclair, who’d left the area years before to become a lawyer in Edinburgh and recently returned to take up the job of gamekeeper. He’d been seen arguing with Dr. Harris, who reveals that the dead man is certainly not Angus Sinclair, to whom she was engaged for two years before he vanished. The faux Sinclair was a great favorite with the local ladies, and Emily wonders if a romantic entanglement rather than his masquerade could provide the motive for his murder. Alexander spins a counterpoint tale set in 1676 Cairnfarn of Tansy, a formerly enslaved woman from Tunis who longs to return home but becomes embroiled in one of the many witchcraft trials so prevalent in Scotland in that period. Although Emily is certain that Sinclair’s murder has nothing to do with witchcraft, the sleuths have their hands full unraveling a web of lies.
An enjoyable mystery and historical information combine in a puzzle whose pieces don’t always fit together snugly.