Publisher's Weekly
A Scottish castle in 1871 is the setting for Knight's ( Enter Second Murderer ) atmospheric but occasionally stiff mystery featuring Edinburgh police inspector Jeremy Faro and his doctor stepson, Vincent Laurie. Faro and Vincent go to Balfray Castle in Orkney, where Faro's mother is temporary housekeeper for the Balfray laird, a school friend of Vincent's. Widower Faro has planned to visit his two daughters, in his own mother's care, and Vincent has been invited to treat the laird's ailing wife, Thora. But Thora dies under mysterious circumstances, and the duo investigates. Faro snoops around the inbred community while his mother fills him in on the local gossip. Vincent, meanwhile, uses a chemical test to determine that Thora was poisoned. When a simpleton is found dead in the graveyard, his corpse next to Thora's exhumed body, Faro suspects that a deranged murderer is loose. Fearing for his daughters' safety, Faro struggles through local superstition and a ''cesspool of human emotions'' to find the killer. Lapses into stilted speech, however, jar the eerie mood and blunt the tale's impact.

Genre: Historical Mystery