A BOOK REVIEW
Though I usually avoid thrillers about serial killers, Edinburgh Twilight is an exception for two reasons. It is a well-written and fascinating story, first of a proposed series, set in Edinburgh in 1881, and its author is a Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine regular contributor, having written both stories and essays for our pages. The byline is Carole Lawrence, which is a family name of Carole Buggé. In SHMM she has written several excellent Sherlock Holmes adventures and wrote two Holmes novels for St. Martin’s Press: The Star of India and The Haunting of Torre Abbey. She also did three “cozy” mysteries for Berkley, the provocatively-titled Who Killed Blanche DuBois?, Who Killed Dorian Gray? and Who Killed Mona Lisa? Her fantasies have appeared in Weird Tales.
The protagonist of Edinburgh Twilight is twenty-seven-year-old Detective Inspector Ian Hamilton, a man haunted by the mysterious fire that killed his parents. One day a young man’s body is found just below Arthur’s Seat, the old mountain dominating Edinburgh’s eastern extremity. At first the death is considered a suicide, but in spite of his superior’s impatience with Hamilton, the inspector is sure the victim was strangled. It soon becomes clear that he is correct as the body count escalates and the citizens become terrified and demand action from the police.
A curious aspect of the murders is that a strange grisly playing card is found on each body. As he investigates, Hamilton is aided by an aunt with a gift for photography and a librarian fascinated by the criminal mind. Things become more complicated when Ian’s estranged brother shows up to complicate his life. Tension mounts as the “Holyrood Strangler” adds more victims to his toll and in the process deliberately draws closer to his nemesis Ian Hamilton.
I found Edinburgh Twilight compelling and difficult to put down—“just one more chapter” turning into nightly marathons. A great deal of its suspense is the growing fear that one of the characters one has come to admire may be the next victim and this does indeed happen.
The novel is available in paperback and Kindle editions. Its author informed me that she has already written the next Ian Hamilton thriller.
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Gene Goodwin is a fan of Colorado, since that’s where he learned to love TexMex food.