Aline Templeton

The Darkness and the Deep

Detective: DI Marjorie Fleming

Time:        Recent Past (About 2004)

Setting:     Galloway

Genre:      Scots Noir

This is the second of Templeon's novels involving Marjorie Fleming and is a stronger book. The nub of the crime is the wrecking of an inshore lifeboat lured onto the rocks with the death of its three erson crew.Three victims but who was the intended target or was it the person who should have been on the vessel?  With that at the core there is plenty of opportunity for false leads before the final denoument. 

The underlying story arc tracks Templeton's concerns about her teenage daughter and the possible strat of her father's dementia as the novel closes.

Rating A

Aileen Templeton's Web Site

Previously Read

Cold in the Earth (Comments posted 26/01/13)

Aline Templeton

Cold in the Earth

Detective: DI Marjorie Fielding
Location: Galloway, Scotland
Time: Recent Past (Set 2003)
Genre: Scots Noir

This is the first of the DI Fielding Novels. Marjorie Fielding is a Detective Inspector based in a very rural Galloway and whose husband is a sheep farmer. The novel is set against the background of the 2003 foot and mouth epidemic with it's strain on the local community following the necessity to cull herds. It is in the process of disposing of the carcasses of a beef herd that a body is found and a murder investigation is required. 

The case is tied up with the disappearance of the long missing elder sister of an investigative journalist/psychologist who is seeking clues to her fate and the almost simultaneous disappearance of the wife of the owner of cattle farm where the elder sister had been working. The farmer's family is not without its psychological misfits.

The underlying story arc involves DI Fleming's strained relationship with her retired Police sergeant father who doesn't think policing is for women and also the trauma faced by her husband after his heard is culled.

Rating B+

Aline Templeton's Web Site

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