Loch of the Dead: A Novel
“a monumental thriller that has its background in remote Moravia, now transplanted to the rocky Scottish coast.”
When Adolphus McGray was a youngster, his little sister Pansy went mad, killing their mother and father with a knife. Adolphus escaped with his life, but from then on was known as “Nine-Nails” McGray. Now, he’s a police inspector and with his partner, Englishman Ian Frey, investigates cases that lean toward the bizarre.
A case has come up that will offer both men more than enough interest, bringing a distraction to the inspector and a possible cure for Pansy’s madness.
Sixteen years ago, Millie Fletcher was assaulted by her employer’s brother, giving birth to his son. Her employer arranged for the child to be placed in foster care. Recently, the brother died, and in his will, recognized his child, leaving the boy a vast inheritance. Now someone is threatening young Benjamin’s life.
Millie wants McGray to find this person and protect her son. In return, she’ll tell him how the waters of Isle Maree can cure his sister of her madness.
Even without that incentive, the facts of the case, as well as its location—an island held sacred by the druids—appeal to McGray though Frey regards things with a little more pragmatism. Frey travels to Loch Maree, with his uncle Maurice tagging along, while McGray goes to Thurso for Benjamin to meet his new family.
Mollie’s employers, the Kolomans, are an interesting lot. In a time when young women are expected to be matrimony-bound, daughters Natalja and Veronika are practical, with a scientific bent, as is their father. Though everyone seems anxious to meet Benjamin and pleasantly disposed toward the boy, when McGray arrives, it’s with news that the clergyman who raised the boy was murdered on the day of his arrival.
Leaving Frey on the mainland, McGray visits Isle Maree to see the man last cured by the islands waters and sets off a chain of events. The island is considered a sacred place since the time of the druids and now old curses and ghosts of the past rise to threaten those living in the present.
Inspector Frey is none too comfortable during McGray’s absence.
“I breathed out, thinking I’d better focus on my side of the loch. I felt caged in the manor, completely cut off from the world and surrounded by a handful of people who resented or mistrusted me, and with a lot of pressing work ahead.”
Soon, more murders occur and a good many things the Kolomans don’t want known will be uncovered.
“I noticed a protrusion on the ground. He looked back at the object, the thick carpet of needles disturbed by his boot. Gingerly, as if it were a poisonous animal, I kicked the clumps of needles aside.
A human skull, eroded and bleached by the elements, its dark, empty sockets stared back at me.”
What kind of rituals were carried on in Isle Maree? Everyone seems to have something they wish to hide. Even young Benjamin has an air of guilt, but what wrongdoing could the boy, who had no idea of his heritage, have committed? The more McGray and Frey learn, the deeper they are drawn into a web of mystery, deceit, and the aftereffects of a curse that has hounded the Koloman family for centuries.
Adolphus McGray is an intriguing character. Where one usually thinks of a Scot as dour and pragmatic, it’s refreshing to find this pugnacious police inspector believing in signs, gypsy seers, and portents while his younger, more refined partner is the levelheaded and no-nonsense one. McGray is also the target of many of Frey’s uncle’s barbs, but the inspector gives as good as he gets. Their give-and-take of insults lightens the atmosphere somewhat, giving a bit of comic relief to lessen the heaviness of the threats hanging in the air.
The attentive reader will find Loch of the Dead contains an amalgam of plotlines, any one of which would make a fine novel in its own right—the adjustment of a youngster brought to a family bestowing upon him his share of a vast inheritance; a newly discovered heir threatened by person or persons unknown; a mysterious island where druidic rites were performed, now considered a sacred shrine to those living nearby; a family haunted by a mystery in its past that threatens to rise again in the present.
Author de Muriel has combined all these elements in a monumental thriller that has its background in remote Moravia, now transplanted to the rocky Scottish coast. Loch of the Dead is the fourth entry in the McGray-Frey mystery series and a stellar example of this author’s craft.