CARRION COMFORT

In the strange, glittering water-world of the Flow Country in far northern Caithness, a man has been drowned. Why then, has his body been found in a ruined croft house, bait for the merciless ravens in their search for carrion?
Kelso Strang, now DCI in the Serious Rural Crime Squad, arrives to find the village of Forsich still in the grip of a hatred going back for years – hatred that also seems to infect the families most closely linked to the victim.
While it's plausible enough that there are those who might feel they had a reason to kill Niall Aitchison, Strang finds it hard to understand the placing of the body where it was bound to be discovered when, lost in the boggy wasteland, the remains might never have been found.
Meanwhile the strands of a web of conspiracy are tightening round Gabrielle Ross who, whether saint or sinner, is poised on the edge of madness or self-destruction.
But the player in the whole deadly game that Strang most wants to interview is her father, Patrick Curran. He can't, though, because Curran is dead – dead, but casting a long, long shadow.


Aline Templeton lives in Edinburgh. She has worked in education and broadcasting and has written numerous articles and stories for newspapers and magazines. Her books have been published in translation in several European countries as well as the United States.