Loch of the Dead
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
Edinburgh's most famed detective duo—"Nine-Nails" McGray and Inspector Ian Frey—face their most metaphysical mystery yet, as they investigate a series of crimes surrounding the miraculous waters in the remote Loch Maree.
A mysterious woman pleads for the help of Inspectors Frey and "Nine-Nails" McGray. Her son, illegitimate scion of the Koloman family, has received an anonymous death threat—right after learning he is to inherit the best part of a vast wine-producing estate.
In exchange for their protection, she offers McGray the ultimate cure for his sister, who has been locked in an insane asylum after brutally murdering their parents: the miraculous waters that spring from a small island in the remote Loch Maree.
The island has been a sacred burial ground since the time of the druids, but the legends around it will turn out to be much darker than McGray could have expected. Murder and increasingly bizarre happenings will intermingle throughout this trip to the Highlands, before Frey and McGray learn a terrible truth.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In de Muriel's excellent fourth Victorian mystery featuring the Commission for the Elucidation of Unsolved Cases Presumably Related to the Odd and Ghostly (after 2018's A Mask of Shadows), the commission's two members, Scottish Insp. Ian Frey and his superior, Adolphus McGray, look into a particularly creepy case. In 1873, servant Millie Fletcher gives up her baby, Benjamin, the product of an assault by Maximilian Koloman, the brother of her employer, Konrad. In 1889, Maximilian signs a document on his deathbed recognizing Benjamin as his heir and asking Konrad to reunite the boy with Millie. Shortly afterward, Millie receives a note threatening her son's life. In return for Frey and McGray's help in protecting Benjamin, Millie offers to cure McGray's mentally ill sister. In search of answers, the pair travel to remote Loch Maree, the Koloman family home, which supposedly contains a healing well and which is also home to legends of Druidic rituals involving bathing in blood. There they soon have a murder to solve. De Muriel keeps the twists coming in the series' best entry to date.
