Malice in the Highlands by Graham Thomas
On a slow day in the bookstore I spent some time on the Internet looking for suggestions of novels that involved fly-fishing. One can only dream of fly fishing at this time of year. I imagine returning to Orkney in June, staying at the Merkister Hotel, going out with a ghillie to fish, coming back to some of the best meals I’ve ever eaten, and watching the sunset that never ends. It is not likely to happen anytime soon, but meanwhile I can read about fly fishing in the highlands in Graham Thomas’ mystery novel Malice in the Highlands.
Malice in the Highlands was published in 1998 and is the first in a series featuring Detective-Chief Superintendent Erskine Powell of New Scotland Yard. Graham Thomas is the very British sounding pseudonym of author Gordon Kosakoski, a biologist based in British Columbia. Looking for more books by this author I discovered that he died in 2008, after writing five books in the Malice series.
Malice in the Highlands finds Erskine Powell off on a fishing trip in the Highlands. Driving in his Triumph along the twists and turns of the narrow country roads he looks forward to a hot bath and a whisky at his destination, the Salar Lodge, on the banks of the River Spey. He has stayed here often, “for a fortnight each May he could forget he was a policeman”. It is a break from his work with the Murder Squad at New Scotland Yard in London, and from his wife and her list of household chores waiting for him at home. Powell and his friend, Chief Inspector Alex Barrett, meet at the lodge each year. This year they are being joined by an old school friend of Powell’s, Pinky Warburton, who has been going through a bit of a rough patch. Year after year Powell and Barrett enjoy friendly competition about who is going to catch the biggest salmon, and this year is no different. As they do at the Merkister, the Salar Lodge will lay out the best of the days catch in the lounge for all to admire.
Of course, this is a murder mystery, so there is soon a murder. There are many suspects, the ghillie, the cook, the owner of the Lodge and/or his son. The daughter of the dead man, and many many more. Powell and Barrett investigate openly and secretly – the mystery twisting and turning as much as the highland roads.
“Powell had always accepted as an article of faith that the detection of a crime was essentially a rational process and that, given time and dogged persistence, even the most intractable puzzles could eventually be untangled. The problem arose with random or fortuitous crimes of the night stalker variety, when the killer had no particular relationship with the victim. For a whimsical moment he imagined that a crazed anti-blood-sport fanatic was running amok on the Spey, preying on unsuspecting fisherman to avenge the coldblooded murder of countless thousands of salmon over the years”.
Of course all is revealed in the end, and though it is the dead of winter here, for as long as it takes to read Malice in the Highlands we can enjoy fishing on the River Spey on a rainy day in May.
PS The best quote in the book is from Rashid, the owner of the Tandoori restaurant frequented by Powell, “My mother used to say also that we are all just gravy spots on the tablecloth of life”.