Drinking Wine and Reading About Scotland

I’m finally getting my house back in order from the Christmas holidays, which is important because we have Mardi Gras decorating to do!  Today I took a break from cleaning and went to my wine group where the conversation ranged from paranormal activity to a recent overseas trip to men and bosses, but we found time to drink a little wine and comment on the wine-dessert pairings. 

 

Chocolate cake made of chickpeas in background!

I’m also continuing to review books I read over the holidays.  I probably should have been drinking a single malt whiskey, rather than wine, before I reviewed this book set in 1950's Scotland.
 

Atria paperback, 2013

Part of a severed leg is found in the laundry of a local hockey team by the neighborhood nurse and “hockey mom” who washes the uniforms each week.  Is it a macabre joke or something more sinister? 

At the very least, it is a front page story for the Highland Gazette and captures the interest of reporter Joanne Ross and her colleagues—fellow reporter Rob McLean; Editor and Joanne’s romantic interest, McAllister; and photographer Hector Bain.  The situation soon takes a more gruesome turn, and all the investigative skills of the Highland Gazette staff are brought to bear on the case.  

A beautiful American jazz singer has also appeared in the village looking for information about her airman husband who died in a plane crash several years before off the Scottish coast.  Is her appearance related to what is happening in the village?  Her inquiries seem innocuous, but someone doesn’t want her finding answers and will go to any lengths to stop her. 

Other newspaper employees featured in this book are the young receptionist Fiona and grizzled deputy editor Don McLeod, plus various family members of the news staff.  The characters and the setting of a small town newspaper in a Scottish seacoast village are major reasons for the charm of this series by A. D. Scott, the pen name of Deborah Ann Nolan.  Another strength of Scott's series is the fact that the characters and their situations evolve and change with each book.

The plots are sometimes far-fetched and this one doesn’t always appear logical to me, but unhinged villains aren’t logical in their actions.  The climax drags in this book, and then one unfinished piece of business is hurriedly completed in a flurry of tidying up unresolved plot elements.  None of this would deter me from reading additional books in the series, however. 

 

To read my review of one of Scott’s earlier mysteries, A Double Death on the Black Isle, click here.