[A Jean Fairbairn/Alasdair Cameron Mystery 05] • The Blue Hackle

In a stately home, no one can hear you scream . . .

Alasdair Cameron and Fergus MacDonald were childhood friends. Their fathers' caps carried a blue hackle, badge-feather of a distinguished Scottish regiment. Now the feather in Fergie's cap is decaying Dunasheen Estate on the Isle of Skye. His desperate schemes to save his home depend on a collection of historic artifacts, a handful of guests paying for a traditional Scottish NewYear celebration, and the help of Alasdair and Jean Fairbairn.

For Jean and Alasdair, the bells of the new year are also wedding bellstheir rings are ready, their guests invited, and the Gothic folly of Fergie's chapel is waiting.

Then a guest is found murdered, lying in blood that's thicker than seawater, the sea that carried generations of Scottish soldiers and settlers to distant shores even as their descendants' hearts turn homeward.

The police crash the party, Alasdair is forced out of retirement, and he and Jean once more find themselves juggling knowledge, belief, and a list of suspects whose secret agendas raise more than few hackles.

Is that the icy winter wind, or the banshee-wail of a MacDonald chatelaine still tending the house two centuries after her murder? Is she affirming that only Fergie's motives are true-blue? Or is she warning that even he is hiding a secret agenda beneath his fool's cap and bells?

Ring out the old, ring in the new. But if Alasdair and Jean can't untangle the threads of the past and use them to net a present-day killer, then they and their wedding rings won't get to the church on time---and more blood will flow for the sake of Auld Lang Syne.