A Small Death in the Great Glen: A Novel

First Line: He dressed the boy's body whilst it was still warm.

It's 1956 in the Highlands of Scotland. and the village that the Highland Gazette calls home probably believes it's filled with modern thinkers. After all, Italians and Poles have moved into the community, opened businesses, and been

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accepted by the villagers. Unfortunately, when the body of a young boy is pulled from a canal, everyone finds that they aren't quite as modern as they wanted to think. Gossip is rampant, and suspicions are cast at any newcomer to the area. The editor of the Gazette wants to change the sleepy paper into something with more hard-hitting news. He believes that he and his staff are going to be able to help the police in their investigation. What he doesn't know is just how much this investigation is going to change his staff and the community.

This book begins slowly and proceeds with great care in setting up the cast of characters and the area in which everyone lives. Once or twice I had a fleeting thought about when they were going to start focusing on the murder, but that's all they were: fleeting thoughts. A.D. Scott is masterful at setting her scene and each of her characters is built, brushstroke by brushstroke, with great care. A Small Death in the Great Glen is as much a character study as it is a mystery, so if you are a character-driven reader, this should definitely be your cup of tea.

The staff of the Highland Gazette is a brilliant bunch of characters-- every one fascinating in his or her own way. We have an escapee from the big city of Glasgow, the old Eternal Cynic, the cub reporter dreaming of his first big break, and an abused wife. We get to know each one during the course of the book, and each one is going to have a part in the investigation.

We're teased along with bits and pieces of the murder investigation, and a clue is left out in sight here and there, but once A Small Death in the Great Glen settles down to find the killer, the ride to justice is filled with twists and turns. I thought I had it all figured out-- but I only had it half right. Another thing I liked is that, although things are deadly serious, Scott lightens the tone with laugh-out-loud funny bits throughout. I know that once I've had a laugh about something the next shocking thing that happens hits me that much harder-- and makes me that much more reluctant to stop reading.

If you're in the mood for a mystery that builds slowly to a climax while it paints a vivid portrait of life in a provincial Scottish village AND creates a marvelous cast of characters, I'd say you were in the mood for A Small Death in the Great Glen. The next book in the series is due to be released at the end of September, and you'd better believe it's on my wishlist!

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Wonderful story about events in a small town in Scotland. Well written compelling story.

I received this book as an ARC from Atria/Simon and Schuster, so I send my thanks to them for sending it to me. I only wish I had liked it more.

I am a UK mystery/fiction/literature addict so whenever something new comes out from there, I tend to get a little excited. This time I was more surprised

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than anything once I started to read.

With no spoilers here, basically the story (which is the first of a series) centers around the staff of the Highland Gazette in 1956. A small boy goes missing and is later found in the canal. The only clues are 1) the recollection of another small child who insists that a "hoodie crow" took him after she, her sister and the boy were playing at ringing doorbells & running away and 2) the coat in which was the boy was found in the canal. If this were the whole of the story, along with the efforts to find the killer, then it probably might have been a good one. But that was not the case. Instead, the author opted to bring in the entire town on this one: a battered woman and her struggles with her alcoholic husband; her in-laws, the Catholic Church, refugees from Poland, and friends and relatives of everyone else and their stories as well. Granted, some of the extraneous bits do have something to do with the case of the dead boy, but because the author has tried to include pretty much everyone in the town, the main story suffers from a lack of cohesion. For example, we're right in the midst of a mystery here, and several pages are spent on a band playing Rock Around the Clock. Then a couple of chapters later, we're back to the mystery again.

I like my crime fiction to be tight, concise, with enough latitude for well-done red herrings. I also think there should be a clear plotline where even if the reader doesn't guess the murderer, on thinking backwards, he or she could say "how did I miss that?" While the author does present a couple of possible alternatives, the revelation of the killer had no build up to it. Also, this book was just all over the map, zigzagging back and forth, here there and everywhere. I must say, I skimmed a lot, and that's never a good sign.

Personally, my hat's off to anyone who writes a book and then gets it published by a major company, so congratulations to Ms. Scott for her achievement. Perhaps this is a book more appealing to cozy mystery readers rather than those who enjoy more taut and edgy mystery and suspense. It just didn't work for me, but I'm sure others will love it.

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It’s 1950 in the western Highlands of Scotland. Little Jamie Fraser has gone missing on his way home from school and Joanne Ross’s daughters, Annie and Wee Jean, were the last ones to see him alive: “We saw him,” she [Wee Jean] explained, “me and Annie, we saw this great big black hoodie

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crow. He opens the door, all of a sudden like, an’ he spreads out his wings . . . and he picks up Jamie in his wings and takes him . . . .” When Jamie is later found dead in the canal and the coroner determines the boy was “interfered with” and murdered, Joanne and her coworkers at the local newspaper wonder--Do the girls actaully know something, or is it just their imaginations trying to make sense out of the death of a friend?

A Small Death in a Great Glen is Scottish writer A. D. Scott’s debut novel in what looks to be a very promising new series centered around a local newspaper in Inverness, Scotland during the 1950s when the scars of World War II were still red and raw. While the plot of the story turns on the murder of the young boy Jamie, the theme revolves around abuse--child abuse; spousal abuse; alcohol abuse; the abuse of power and position, both civic and religious—and the community’s silent acceptance that enables such abuse to continue.

The narrative juggles multiple plot threads that are woven into and around the hunt for Jamie’s killer. There’s Joanne, a part-time typist for the Highland Gazette, a job of which her husband, Bill Ross, greatly disapproves. Their marriage is one of constant mental and physical tension but divorce is not an acceptable option 1950s rural Scotland. Also, there’s Joanne’s Italian friend, Chiara, whose family has settled in Scotland after fleeing Italy during the war and now owns a successful cafe in town. She’s engaged to Peter Kowalski, a Polish imigrant. Then there’s the Polish seaman who jumped shipped hoping to find asylum. Not everyone is eager to embrace those from outside their country’s borders. And when Jamie is murdered, the natives naturally look to the outsiders for the killer. The seaman makes a very convenient scapegoat for Inspector Thompson who doesn’t see the reason for looking any further when the solution is so obvious. Add in the Tinkers, Scotland’s roving band of gypsies who aren’t anxious to come forward with their knowledge of events, and the Gazette’s editor-in-chief, John McAllister, who has his own mystery concerning his brother’s suicide to solve, and you have a constantly shifting flow of action and perspective with a meanwhile-back-at-the-ranch quality that keeps you thoroughly engaged.

While there are some abrupt shifts between storylines that can be somewhat jarring, A Small Death in a Great Glen is packed with plots, personalities and all the drama of a close-knit community struggling to adjust to a post-war world. Yet the story never loses sight of the central plot and ties off all the seemingly loose threads neatly in the end. I’m very much looking forward to the sequel that is due to be released in the summer of 2011.

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The plot of this story is the murder of a little boy in this small Scottish community and who may have done it. There is a lot of speculation but not real clues. The main character of the story is Joanne Ross who is a wife and mother and works at the local newspaper, Highland Gazette. Her two

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daughters were playing with the murdered boy one afternoon. They would run up to a house and ring the doorbell and run. They were at a particular house and the little boy did this but didn't run in time as someone all dressed in black with a hood, they call him a "hoodie crow", snatched him up. That was the last the little boy was seen alive and the two girls were afraid to tell what they saw. Among the people that were suspected was a Polish sailor, and eventually a priest. Other characters involved are Chiara, her father Gino, who owns a cafe, Rob who is a young reporter at the paper.
In a subplot, Joanne is a battered wife. 1956 was not a time when an abused woman had any alternative but to continue to live this way or be completly cut off from family and even financial means if she left. Joanne's way of handling this abuse was to work at the newspaper which she enjoyed. She is a part time typist and her boss, John McAllister, at the newspaper wants to create a better paper and try to uncover the clues and try to solve this terrible crime, so that this news would help the newspaper increase readers. Joanne finds herself getting closer to her boss while assisting him. At the same time she endures her mean spirited mother-in-law who does not believe that her son would be a wife beater. Eventually Joanne has to make a decision on how she wants her and her children to live if she decides to leave her husband.
Intertwined in the story is the death of McAllister's brother which occured many years ago and was considered a suicide. As McAllister delves deeper into the story of the murdered boy, he finds clues as to what had actually happened to his brother. There are a lot of little subplots and the author weaves these together to create a very readable and suspensfull story. I liked that Joanne finally had the courage to do what was right for her and her children. I look forward to the next book to come out in 2011.

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Reporter and a typist at a newspaper in a tiny Scottish town try to solve a murder case.

A boy is found dead in a canal and the murder investigation begins. The only witnesses are the two girls, daughters of Joanne (our main character) who were walking home from school with the boy. The police blame a newly arrived Polish stranger in town, but the evidence is circumstancial. The

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employees of the local small-town weekly newspaper take it upon themselves to find the real murderer. If you can wade through the Scottish vocabulary and dialogue, which I found problematic at times, and if you like murder mysteries you'll like this book.

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A Small Death in the Great Glen is one of those novels I wanted to like more than I did. It is easy to see what Ms. Scott was trying to accomplish. She was hoping to create a different type of detective novel, one that addresses some of the social issues of the time while solving a mystery.

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Unfortunately, with it being part murder mystery, part social commentary, part personal discovery, and part cultural exploration, there was too much occurring at the same time. Consequently, the book lost its focus several times throughout the course of the novel, and the entire novel suffered.

The largest weaknesses are its pacing and the sheer number of characters. Subplots are fine and important to novels, but some subplots were drawn out through the entire novel while others were resolved within a chapter. The result is a jagged story that speeds up and slows down at uneven intervals that have no bearing on the overarching story. Also, there are a LOT of major and even more minor characters in this novel that each have their own back story and subplot. There is simply too many to track, and the reader quickly becomes confused. Any time a reader becomes confused or has to backtrack to try to remember who was doing what, the story loses some of its hold on the reader.

Having grown up in the Scottish Highlands, Ms. Scott does a fantastic job of presenting her birth location in all its glory. Infusing a lot of the colloquialisms into the dialogues adds a sense of authenticity to the story, lending an air of charm to some of the proceedings. The reader gets a picturesque and honest idea of what it was like to live in the Scottish highlands in the 1950s, replete with attitudes and atmosphere. A Small Death in the Great Glen is not a novel that adapts its setting to fit more modern thinking but rather forces the reader to adapt to a more historical mindset. Challenging but at the same time informative, this is where the novel shines.

At times slow to the point where it is interesting, at other times where so much happens in a few short pages that the reader needs to pause to catch one's breath, A Small Death in the Great Glen is a uneven novel. Ms. Scott deserves accolades for tackling a very difficult subject matter, but it would have been more effective had it not been buried as a subplot. Even more important, there should have been greater focus on main characters versus minor ones. With such a large cast, the distinction is lost, and the reader cannot determine which subplots require the greater attention. Its presentation of the Scottish highlands is superb, but the jaggedness of the story bogs down the entire novel. This is unfortunate because there are moments of brilliance; they just happened to buried under too much clutter for them to shine appropriately.

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Horrible. I got through chapter 10 by dint of sheer will. Bad writing, predictable plotting, and nothing redeeming about it. It gets one star because it is, after all, a book. Save yourself the misery: Avoid.

Discussed at 4MA. A historical mystery with more history than mystery set in Scotland. A small boy has been murdered and the "hoody crow" that a child saw is dismissed as imagination at work. Good newsroom atmosphere and character development; the plot is secondary.

There is a lot of potential here. I love the setting, the time and all things Scot.
The newspaper staff are well done but there are so many other characters and stories going on in this book.
I will read the next one to see if some things get better.

I really enjoyed this book which appears to be set in a thinly disguised Inverness and mentions my grandmother's birthplace of Lossiemouth several times as well as Elgin, Nairn, and Forres. As A.D. Scott was describing the "small town" where the murders occured I was remembering my visit there. I

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thought I had figured out "who done it" when Scott changed things up and surprised me with the identity of the real murderer. Next title please!

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It's 1950 in the western Highlands of Scotland. Little Jamie Fraser has gone missing on his way home from school and Joanne Ross's daughters, Annie and Wee Jean, were the last ones to see him alive: "We saw him," she [Wee Jean] explained, "me and Annie, we saw this great big black hoodie crow. He

Show More

opens the door, all of a sudden like, an' he spreads out his wings . . . and he picks up Jamie in his wings and takes him . . . ." When Jamie is later found dead in the canal and the coroner determines the boy was "interfered with" and murdered, Joanne and her coworkers at the local newspaper wonder--Do the girls actaully know something, or is it just their imaginations trying to make sense out of the death of a friend?

"A Small Death in the Great Glen" is Scottish writer A. D. Scott's debut novel in what looks to be a very promising new series centered around a local newspaper in Inverness, Scotland during the 1950's when the scars of World War II were still red and raw. While the plot of the story turns on the murder of the young boy Jamie, the theme revolves around abuse--child abuse; spousal abuse; alcohol abuse; the abuse of power and position, both civic and religious--and the community's silent acceptance that enables such abuse to continue.

While there are some abrupt shifts between story lines that can be somewhat jarring, A Small Death in the Great Glen is packed with plots, personalities and all the drama of a close-knit community struggling to adjust to a post-war world. Yet the story never loses sight of the central plot and ties off all the seemingly loose threads neatly in the end.

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Busy. If I had to pick one word to describe Scott's debut, it might be "busy." As in too much going on. As in trying to do too much. She gets top marks for an amazing number of interesting characters and for their development, as well as for her ability to evoke a solid sense of Scotland in the

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1950s. The main plot is extremely interesting, but an abundance of secondary and even tertiary story lines cause the pacing of the book to suffer and creates an overall inconsistency in the final result. In addition to the main murder story, there are at least two subplots involving the main female protagonist and another involving her editor at the local paper. And there are others, as well. There is a wedding to be planned and executed, told in great detail. There is Scotland's version of a gypsy group and the way that it is treated by the xenophobic locals. There is a weekly newspaper to put out, with time and pages devoted to the details of getting that job done. And on an on. And while each story with its subset of characters is interesting in its own right, there is just too much of it, and it takes the story away from the main murder mystery too often and for excessive periods of time. Perhaps it would have been wiser to save a subplot or two for the second book in the series. I was left with the sense that the author was trying to accomplish too much. Sometimes less is more, and all that.

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Interesting setting. Some problems with this first novel, but I’ll keep on because of the characters and setting. A bit convoluted; perhaps trying to do too much. Is it a mystery or social commentary. Need for balance.