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, DCI in the Serious Rural Crime Squad, arrives from Edinburgh to find the village of Forsich still in the grip of a hatred going back years – hatred that also seems to infect the families most closely linked to the victim. 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.