A cold highland wind

Alexander's meandering 17th historical cozy featuring amateur sleuths Lady Emily Aston and her husband Colin Hargreaves (after 2022's Secrets of the Nile) interweaves events from 1905 and 1676. The 1905 story line sees Colin, Lady Emily, and their three sons visiting Cairnfarn Castle, the Scottish estate of Emily's friend Jeremy, Duke of Bainbridge. Following a lively celebration, Angus Sinclair, Jeremy's gamekeeper, is found beaten and stabbed to death near a lake on the property. The ferocity of the attack leads Emily to deduce that it was a crime of passion, and indeed, handsome Angus seems to have had more than his fair share of jilted admirers. Alexander intersperses Lady Emily and Colin's investigation with chapters set in the 17th century and narrated by Tansy, a young woman who was kidnapped from her North African home, sold into slavery, and presented as a wedding gift to Rossalyn MacAllister, Lady of Cairnfarn Castle. When Rossalyn is widowed, she and Tansy are cast out of Cairnfarn by the new laird and conscripted to life in the nearby village, where they're rumored to practice witchcraft. The Tansy chapters are often fascinating, but their connection to the main murder plot is labored and slight. This offers pleasant historical escapism but misses the mark as a mystery. (Oct.)

A trip to the Scottish Highlands provides another crime-solving opportunity for a pair of aristocratic sleuths in 1905. The beauty of the Highlands has always appealed to Lady Emily Hargreaves. So she; her husband, Colin; their twin sons, Richard and Henry; and their ward, Tom, are delighted to accept an invitation to Cairnfarn Castle from their dearest friend, Jeremy Sheffield, Duke of Bainbridge. The village is hosting a ceilidh to welcome Dr. Genevieve Harris, that rara avis at the time, a woman doctor, who's replacing the retiring Dr. William Cameron. The people are friendly and the party fun, but the following day the boys stumble on the body of Angus Sinclair, Jeremy's gamekeeper. There's something of a mystery about Sinclair, who'd left the area years before to become a lawyer in Edinburgh and recently returned to take up the job of gamekeeper. He'd been seen arguing with Dr. Harris, who reveals that the dead man is certainly not Angus Sinclair, to whom she was engaged for two years before he vanished. The faux Sinclair was a great favorite with the local ladies, and Emily wonders if a romantic entanglement rather than his masquerade could provide the motive for his murder. Alexander spins a counterpoint tale set in 1676 Cairnfarn of Tansy, a formerly enslaved woman from Tunis who longs to return home but becomes embroiled in one of the many witchcraft trials so prevalent in Scotland in that period. Although Emily is certain that Sinclair's murder has nothing to do with witchcraft, the sleuths have their hands full unraveling a web of lies. An enjoyable mystery and historical information combine in a puzzle whose pieces don't always fit together snugly. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.