Shorter version already published on the Radio 2 Book Club group on Facebook.
I have a confession to make. No, I haven’t hidden a body anywhere! It’s just that (hand on heart) I am not usually a huge fan of murder mysteries. There, I’ve said it. If I read them at all they are usually ones set in historic periods. I am rather more inclined to the likes of Brother Cadfael (remember Ellis Peters?) than John Rebus, I suppose. During Lockdown I found myself avoiding dramatised versions too (not watched a single episode of Line of Duty) – reasoning, with half-baked logic, that life was already quite grim enough without inventing someone fictional in order to murder them.
For this Highlands-based series, however, I have to make an exception. I stumbled across the first, Shadow Man, a few years back and surprised myself by enjoying it, so much so that I looked out for the next, What Lies Buried. It was even better in my view. In the Blood is the third in the series. Can you read it without reading the previous two first? Of course you can, but I am willing to bet you’ll want to backtrack and fill in the gaps afterwards.
The reason for this guilty pleasure is personified in Lukas Mahler, Margaret Kirk’s enigmatic and convincing ‘leading man’ (much of Kirk’s writing shouts screenplay – this is crying out to become a TV adaptation). There has been considerable discussion about political correctness in detective fiction recently – some of the hard-drinking, disgruntled dinosaurs who have been around for years are aging with their authors and struggling, unrealistically, with the red tape of modern policing.
Mahler is very different – a modern detective who both kicks against and understands the system within which he works. He has a complex back story which is only being revealed by cunning degrees. A traumatic childhood. A foreign connection. A disturbed mother. And – something so many of us can relate to – migraine when under stress. Which he is, of course. Constantly. Some of it the job. Some of it, undoubtedly, self-inflicted.
In the Blood sees Lukas facing up to the death of someone he admired, someone who inspired him. The victim has died – truly horribly – in a remote corner of Orkney. He quite simply should not have been there. The reason he is forms the backbone of a plot rich in local detail ranging from drug-dealing to botany (straight back to Brother Cadfael’s herb garden for a moment), folklore and the occult. There is the tantalising addition of a hanging storyline involving Lukas’ love interest, Anna, and the echoes of how they met, plus a plethora of Orcadian and Highland characters (I have an especially soft spot for Fergie and his highly dodgy motor).
This is a landscape I am fortunate already to know, love and dwell in, but if you have never explored the Highlands and Orkney this excellent murder mystery could well be the trigger for the holiday of a lifetime.
Highly recommended.
For visually impaired readers, this large paperback features a dramatic red and black cover with a distant seascape and standing stones – possibly the Ring of Brodgar on Orkney.
In the Blood is published by Orion Books priced £14.99 and is also now available as an ebook.
Vee Walker writes... 