Naming the Bones
Louise Welsh
Felony & Mayhem Press
In this atmospheric and leisurely Scottish mystery, youngish Murray Watson, Glasgow doctor of English literature, has taken a sabbatical to research his literary inspiration, the dead poet Archie Lunan. Drowned sailing in a storm off a remote island in the 1970s, Lunan, 25, left only one slim volume of poems.
There are those — including Watson's department head, Fergus Baine, who think one volume was quite enough. Baine was against the project from the beginning and after a discouraging slog through the minimal record, Watson is beginning to wonder if Baine wasn't right after all.
But then Watson is having an affair with Baine's wife, which might also explain his boss' general enmity. Interviewing every tenuous lead, from old drinking buddies in gritty pubs to Lunan's mentor, a secretive retired professor with a deep dislike of Fergus Baine, to an attractive young widow whose husband had an unhealthy interest in art and suicide, Watson decides to go to Lismore, where Lunan died and his lover, Christie, still lives.
Christie has refused to have anything to do with Watson's project. She has even promised to have him prosecuted as a stalker if she catches sight of him. So Watson, while determined, is circumspect, probing the clannish islanders for information about the pair's history while ducking out of sight every time he sees Christie.
Dr. Watson, like his namesake, is charmingly clueless. And for all that his personal life is a wreck, and his professional life is teetering, he still manages to be engaging rather than pathetic. The island — complete with a deserted limekiln village — is everything you could ask for: bleak, secretive, wet, rocky, muddy and romantic. And the central conundrum: why can't an artist's work stand on its own, without personal context muddying perceptions, is playful rather than pedantic.
Welsh ("The Cutting Room") delivers a literate novel full of prickly, demanding characters (except for hapless Watson who is more battered than battering, though he does try) with a wonderfully over-the-top macabre ending. Highly recommended for those who like their mysteries edgy, literate and not too bloody.
Haunt Me Still
Jennifer Lee Carrell
Plume paperback
Kate Stanley, a young Shakespearian scholar who has left academia to direct Shakespeare on the stage, agrees to mount a production of Macbeth at Dunsinnan Castle, home of widowed Lady Nairn, the former Shakespearean star Janet Douglas, who left stage and screen for love.
Over the years she and her husband collected Macbeth antiquities and Lady Nairn now wants to include them — and herself — in the production. Also, if it can be found, Lady Nairn would like to include a rumored earlier version of the play, said to include real magic and authentic witches.
Once the cast assembles — including Lady Nairn's headstrong niece Lily, who fancies herself a budding witch, and Kate's former lover (from "Interred with Their Bones"), a black ops type who's providing security — strange things begin to happen.
Kate goes up Dunsinnan Hill by herself, as she's been warned not to, falls asleep and wakes to find a whispering voice in the wind, a ritual knife at her feet and Lily's dead body covered with a gown of beetles' wings. But back at the castle, she finds Lily, quite alive and every bit as troublesome as ever.
The plot continues in this way, fey events growing macabre, magic mixing with Shakespearian scholarship, and characters who are not quite what they claim to be, until an actual death toll begins to mount.
Following every aspect of the legendary Macbeth curse, weaving together Shakespearian research and rumor with Wiccan lore, Carrell sometimes gets bogged down in the research on the research. Thus one cryptic reference may have several — or more — roots as words are traced to their medieval or old Gaelic roots and double meanings become triple or quadruple. All of this can make your head spin.
Or capture your puzzle-loving imagination, depending on the sort of reader you are. Shakespeare aficionados may revel in the arcane details and alternative Macbeth scenes, though many will find points of disagreement.
The action is also dizzying, though there are so many characters and so much trickery involved that the action does not always advance the story as it should. In essence, this is a well-written, deeply researched and imaginative story, which is about a hundred pages too long.
Source http://www.seacoastonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110327/ENTERTAIN/103270309/-1/NEWSMAP
Louise Welsh
Felony & Mayhem Press
In this atmospheric and leisurely Scottish mystery, youngish Murray Watson, Glasgow doctor of English literature, has taken a sabbatical to research his literary inspiration, the dead poet Archie Lunan. Drowned sailing in a storm off a remote island in the 1970s, Lunan, 25, left only one slim volume of poems.
There are those — including Watson's department head, Fergus Baine, who think one volume was quite enough. Baine was against the project from the beginning and after a discouraging slog through the minimal record, Watson is beginning to wonder if Baine wasn't right after all.
But then Watson is having an affair with Baine's wife, which might also explain his boss' general enmity. Interviewing every tenuous lead, from old drinking buddies in gritty pubs to Lunan's mentor, a secretive retired professor with a deep dislike of Fergus Baine, to an attractive young widow whose husband had an unhealthy interest in art and suicide, Watson decides to go to Lismore, where Lunan died and his lover, Christie, still lives.
Christie has refused to have anything to do with Watson's project. She has even promised to have him prosecuted as a stalker if she catches sight of him. So Watson, while determined, is circumspect, probing the clannish islanders for information about the pair's history while ducking out of sight every time he sees Christie.
Dr. Watson, like his namesake, is charmingly clueless. And for all that his personal life is a wreck, and his professional life is teetering, he still manages to be engaging rather than pathetic. The island — complete with a deserted limekiln village — is everything you could ask for: bleak, secretive, wet, rocky, muddy and romantic. And the central conundrum: why can't an artist's work stand on its own, without personal context muddying perceptions, is playful rather than pedantic.
Welsh ("The Cutting Room") delivers a literate novel full of prickly, demanding characters (except for hapless Watson who is more battered than battering, though he does try) with a wonderfully over-the-top macabre ending. Highly recommended for those who like their mysteries edgy, literate and not too bloody.
Haunt Me Still
Jennifer Lee Carrell
Plume paperback
Kate Stanley, a young Shakespearian scholar who has left academia to direct Shakespeare on the stage, agrees to mount a production of Macbeth at Dunsinnan Castle, home of widowed Lady Nairn, the former Shakespearean star Janet Douglas, who left stage and screen for love.
Over the years she and her husband collected Macbeth antiquities and Lady Nairn now wants to include them — and herself — in the production. Also, if it can be found, Lady Nairn would like to include a rumored earlier version of the play, said to include real magic and authentic witches.
Once the cast assembles — including Lady Nairn's headstrong niece Lily, who fancies herself a budding witch, and Kate's former lover (from "Interred with Their Bones"), a black ops type who's providing security — strange things begin to happen.
Kate goes up Dunsinnan Hill by herself, as she's been warned not to, falls asleep and wakes to find a whispering voice in the wind, a ritual knife at her feet and Lily's dead body covered with a gown of beetles' wings. But back at the castle, she finds Lily, quite alive and every bit as troublesome as ever.
The plot continues in this way, fey events growing macabre, magic mixing with Shakespearian scholarship, and characters who are not quite what they claim to be, until an actual death toll begins to mount.
Following every aspect of the legendary Macbeth curse, weaving together Shakespearian research and rumor with Wiccan lore, Carrell sometimes gets bogged down in the research on the research. Thus one cryptic reference may have several — or more — roots as words are traced to their medieval or old Gaelic roots and double meanings become triple or quadruple. All of this can make your head spin.
Or capture your puzzle-loving imagination, depending on the sort of reader you are. Shakespeare aficionados may revel in the arcane details and alternative Macbeth scenes, though many will find points of disagreement.
The action is also dizzying, though there are so many characters and so much trickery involved that the action does not always advance the story as it should. In essence, this is a well-written, deeply researched and imaginative story, which is about a hundred pages too long.
Source http://www.seacoastonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110327/ENTERTAIN/103270309/-1/NEWSMAP
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