Ghost Walk by
Alanna Knight
hbk out September 04
Published by Allison Busby
at £18.99
Having written twelve novels in the Inspector Faro series about a Scottish
detective in the late 19th century, Alanna Knight more recently began
another series revolving around his daughter Rose McQuinn, who is a late
Victorian 'private eye' in Edinburgh. Ghost Walk is the fourth of these, and in it Rose is about to be married again
in a village in the Borders. Previously wed to Danny McQuinn, an assistant
to her father, he vanished when they lived in Arizona. Now she has another
of her father's men as fiancé, DI Jack McMerry, but strange things happen
prior to the wedding. An Edinburgh nun claims that Rose's former husband
recently sent her a letter, then she discovers Danny's old relative, priest in
the village, murdered in his church, swiftly followed by his housekeeper's
demise. Rose has a difficult time with her future mother-in-law, made worse
by Jack's continuing absence at a trial. The mystery thickens with a possible
Fenian plot against the Queen on her Diamond Jubilee, possibly involving
an aristocratic Catholic family who live nearby.
In some ways, the story seems like a children's tale with murders added,
having a slightly ethereal, naïve quality, aided by the presence of Thane, a
huge semi-mystical deerhound, whose home and origins are never explained,
but who acts as a body-guard to Rose. Within the spectrum of murder books,
this is a relatively gentle and entertaining yarn, capturing the ambience of
the Scottish borders a century ago.
(
Bernard Knight
ex Home Office Pathologist and author of the highly acclaimed Crowner John series)
Ghost Walk by
Alanna Knight
