Hodder & Stoughton/ 13 February 2025/ 363 pages/e-book |Review copy| 5*
I read the first Loch Down Murder Mystery, Loch Down Abbey in 2021 and enjoyed it very much, so I was looking forward to reading Only Murders in the Abbey, set in 1930s Scotland . And I’m glad to say that I thought it was even better than the first one.
Description from the publishers:
Mrs MacBain, thank god it’s you.’ Without another word, he grabbed her arm and pulled her into the room, locking the door behind them. Mrs MacBain turned around, clearly offended at being manhandled, but then gasped, ‘Is that blood?’
Loch Down Abbey is full of guests for a Highland Ball. Including several uninvited members of the Inverkillen clan, the Abbey’s former residents. Housekeeper Mrs MacBain thinks her biggest challenge will be finding suitable rooms for everyone and keeping the peace at cocktail hour.
Until the morning after the ball, when one of the guests is discovered inside the Abbey’s library – as dead as a doornail.
Who would have had motive to want them dead? And how did they manage to commit their crime and escape while keeping the door locked from the inside?
With an Abbey full of suspects and secrets, it is down to Mrs MacBain to catch the killer before they strike again…
The Abbey, formerly the ancestral home of the Ogilvy-Sinclair family is now an hotel, owned by several of the long-standing employees and staffed mainly by the former servants, led by Mrs Alice McBain as the Director of Operations. The manager of the hotel is The Honourable Fergus Ogilvy-Sinclair, the youngest grandson of Lady Georgina, the Dowager Countess of Inverkillen. Her eldest grandson is Lord Angus Inverkillen, the current Earl of Inverkillen.
There are so many characters in this book including family members, hotel staff and guests that I found it difficult to keep track of all of them. However the main characters are very clearly defined and there is a list of all the characters at the beginning of the book, which is a great help.
The book begins the morning after a Highland Ball as Hudson, one of the co-owners of the Abbey, is doing his rounds when he finds a dead body in the Small Library, which had been locked for the Ball. The name of the victim is not revealed. The narrative then goes back to the fortnight before the Ball, introducing the characters and their relationships and it is not until the second half of the book that the identity of the victim is revealed.
Detective Inspector Jarvis from the local constabulary is called in to investigate, but as Mrs McBain thinks he is not ‘the sharpest axe in the shed’. And it is mainly down to her to get to the bottom of the mystery – how a murder could take place in a locked room, who had the motive to commit murder and how was the opium trade in Shanghai involved. As the victim had been stabbed to death the number of suspects includes all the men at the ball who were in Highland dress which includes a sgian-dubh, (pronounced ‘skeen doo’), a small single-edged knife, worn as part of Highland dress in the sock of a kilted Scot. So, there are many suspects, making the investigation tremendously complicated and involving many red herrings, and twists and turns as several secrets and scandals are revealed.The Epilogue introduces yet another unexpected turn.
How on earth Beth Cowan-Erskine kept so many strands in play, set in a richly described location and with believable characters is totally beyond me. But she did, with immense skill making this a most enjoyable book. As she describes it it is ‘a lunatic world’ that she has created. I really hope there will be a third Lock Down Murder Mystery.
Many thanks to the publishers for a review copy via NetGalley.
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