Marilyn's Mystery Reads

Death at a Highland Wedding is the fourth mystery in the Rip Through Time series, books that take readers from today’s world to 19th-century Scotland.  As the author explains in the book’s introduction, Mallory Atkinson, a police detective in Vancouver, is visiting her grandmother in Edinburgh when she is attacked on a dark street.  When she regains consciousness, she is Catriona Mitchell, a 19-year-old housemaid in the home of Dr. Duncan Gray, a doctor and surgeon.

In this latest installment, Mallory, Gray, Gray’s sister Isla, and Edinburgh Police Detective Hugh McCreadie are on their way to the wedding of the men’s friend.  There’s tension during the trip as they travel, as McCreadie had been engaged to the sister of the groom several years earlier.  He had ended their relationship, something that simply isn’t done among their crowd, and he and Violet have not seen each other since.

The upcoming marriage, as is typical among the well-to-do gentry of the time, is not quite a love match; rather it is more like the joining of two families that is meant to keep their lands and finances intact for the following generations.  When Mallory meets the groom, Archie Cranston, she is less than charmed, believing he is an arrogant, pompous individual, an impression he does nothing to alter for the rest of the first evening they’re at his hunting lodge.  But she very much likes his fiancée Fiona, believing that Archie has definitely gotten the better of the bargain.

The last official member of the wedding party is another school chum of the groom’s, Ezra Sinclair.  He is the groom’s best man, an individual described by the others who know him as a kind, smart, helpful person, which makes Mallory wonder why he never married.  Then, two mornings after Mallory and her friends arrive, they are walking through the woods of the Cranston estate and spot a body on the ground.  It’s wearing the long dark coat that belongs to Archie, but when they get closer they realize it’s Ezra.

Kelley Armstrong is an extremely prolific author, and I’ve reviewed several of her mysteries on my blog.  In the Rip Through Time series, she skillfully takes readers back 150 years, imagining Mallory’s difficulties in trying to transition from life in 21st-century Canada to life in 19th-century Scotland.  Only a handful of people know her secret, and she wants to keep it that way.

Death at a Highland Wedding is the fourth novel featuring Mallory, and for those who have read the previous books, it’s becoming clear that the protagonist is now “at home” in her new incarnation and has settled into Edinburgh and her position as a housemaid/assistant to Duncan Gray.  The author has skillfully woven together the two strands of the protagonist’s life into a fascinating series.

You can read more about the author at this website.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her website.  In addition to book review posts, there are sections featuring Golden Oldies, Past Masters and Mistresses, and an About Marilyn column that features her opinions about everything to do with mystery novel.

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