The High Island

Lin Anderson

YOU only have to look at England’s prolonged and bitter War of the Roses to learn that the fall-out can be not just vicious, but deadly, when family feuds become more than just domestic battles.

And when you live and work as a police detective in the small and tight-knit communities of Scotland’s wild and beautiful Orkney islands where you grew up, the warring, the accusations and the acts of revenge can become so close to home that secrets in your own past start to rise perilously to the surface.

Welcome back to Scotland’s rugged and most northerly coast where Lin Anderson (pictured below), one of the undisputed queens of Tartan Noir, has created a stunning crime-rich world on the remote Orkney archipelago… first, through her atmospheric and long-running murder mysteries starring forensic scientist Dr Rhona MacLeod, and now with this thrilling offshoot series.

Taking centre stage in these gritty Orcadia Mysteries is Detective Inspector Erling Flett, who has returned to Orkney following years away and, after rising through the ranks to a senior police detective role, finds himself as both an insider and an outsider among people who were once known to him… but now feel more like strangers.

At his side at work is Detectve Sergeant Jo Green, his strong and dependable sidekick who has been transferred to Kirkwall from Caithness and is proving to be the perfect yin to Flett’s yang. And The High Island, which begins with the nightmare discovery of the remains of a young mother and her baby on a building site on the island of Hoy, is a dark and dazzling opener.

It’s a big day on the ‘high’ island of Hoy – scene of the infamous sinking of the Royal Navy’s famous battleship HMS Royal Oak by a German submarine at Scapa Flow in 1939 – as islanders gather for the funeral of Ivor Mowat, one of its oldest residents.

But not everyone is in mourning for the loss of Ivor… there are many who disliked him and even members of his own family hold their grudges. Locals are well aware that Orkney has a long history of family feuds stretching back to their Viking ancestors and land ownership is often at the heart of these rifts.

And it turns out Ivor has inflamed old tensions by secretly selling the old family croft to Richard Webber Maitland, a wealthy architect with links to the island, who has already started clearing the area to build a contemporary eco-house. And to make matters worse, it is rumoured that Ivor has changed his will, in favour of his youngest grandson, Kris Mowat, who doesn’t now live in Orkney.

But the Maitland family’s dream of building a stunning eco-home becomes a waking nightmare when the peat yields a grisly secret… the remains of a young mother and her baby. For DI Erling Flett, the discovery raises spectres from the past. He spent years running from Orkney, only to be pulled back to the islands he once fled. As he fights to identify the nameless woman and child, the local community starts to push back… and his own troubled history begins to surface.

There is a lethal family feud at the heart of this case, one that involves abuse, a terrible revenge and blood-soaked soil. As Flett delves into some disturbing and heartbreaking secrets, can he finally face the ghosts of his own past… or will the island claim its next victim before the truth is told?

As always, Anderson wows readers with her powerful and descriptive gift for people and place, sweeping us away to the windswept islands she knows and loves, those remote clifftops, peat bogs and isolated crofts on the edge of the British Isles where residents are shaped by their isolation, their unforgiving landscape, their history, and even the legacies of their long-ago Viking invaders.

But The High Island is also a gripping page-turner which blends top class police procedural and a cast of superbly portrayed characters with an intriguing and emotive mystery steeped in the darkness, danger and emotional depth that have become the hallmarks of Anderson’s writing.

The discovery of the two bodies acts as portal into both old crimes and grudges, and more contemporary threats and law-breaking like drug running and organised crime. And for DI Flett and DS Jones, this tricky case opens up a Pandora’s box of family feuds, inheritance wars, fights over land, and callous acts of revenge.

For fans of Anderson’s Rhona MacLeod books, there will be a few familiar faces here, not least our main man Erling Flett who now takes on a much enhanced role, but readers only just discovering these top-notch Scottish mysteries, need not fear because new and old faces slip seamlessly into this classy and compelling reset for one of the crime world’s most gifted writers… and one of Tartan Noir’s most exhilarating locations. 
(Macmillan, hardback, £20)