Nobody
liked pensioner Arnold Fleming who was spending his twilight
years with the Dominicans in Perth, but surely the Devil himself
did not carry him away one night? Yet this is what people
are saying and he has certainly vanished with even a witness
to describe the event. Gil is sent to investigate and finds
a body, then another…
This is one of my favorites of the currently available historical
mystery series. Few other authors manage to evoke such a sense
of time and place complete with authentic speech and customs.
You can always expect a good and tortuous plot to unravel
with the odd dash of humor, something of the bizarre and usually
a different setting. This time it is Perth, so we get to enjoy
one of the main pleasures of a long running series which is
being introduced to some new characters while finding out
what the series ones have been getting up to. We find out
more about them too, and get to see how they have grown and
changed since the first book. I didn’t guess any of
it, so it was fun reading about Alys’ experiments, trying
to deduce the identity of the missing husband and of course
whodunit and why. Anybody who was worried about the amount
of dialect in some of the earlier books will be pleased to
read that there is very little this time, but if you require
help a website address is given. That is a lot for one book
of modest length to contain so I do hope that this series
runs and runs; it certainly deserves it.
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