I’m reviewing The Bookseller of Inverness by SG MacLean #historicalfiction #bookreview #highlyrecommended

Here’s the blurb

A GRIPPING HISTORICAL THRILLER SET IN INVERNESS IN THE WAKE OF THE 1746 BATTLE OF CULLODEN.

‘This slice of historical fiction takes you on a wild ride’ THE TIMES

After Culloden, Iain MacGillivray was left for dead on Drummossie Moor. Wounded, his face brutally slashed, he survived only by pretending to be dead as the Redcoats patrolled the corpses of his Jacobite comrades.

Six years later, with the clan chiefs routed and the Highlands subsumed into the British state, Iain lives a quiet life, working as a bookseller in Inverness. One day, after helping several of his regular customers, he notices a stranger lurking in the upper gallery of his shop, poring over his collection. But the man refuses to say what he’s searching for and only leaves when Iain closes for the night.

The next morning Iain opens up shop and finds the stranger dead, his throat cut, and the murder weapon laid out in front of him – a sword with a white cockade on its hilt, the emblem of the Jacobites. With no sign of the killer, Iain wonders whether the stranger discovered what he was looking for – and whether he paid for it with his life. He soon finds himself embroiled in a web of deceit and a series of old scores to be settled in the ashes of war.

Purchase Link

https://amzn.to/49hChUR

My Review

The Bookseller of Inverness is an enthralling mystery set during the years after the events of the Battle of Culloden in 1745. It portrays the uneasy accord in Inverness at the time, with the Jacobites (well, those who survived the repercussions and the battle itself of 1746) and Hanoverians living in an uneasy discord that threatens to crack at the slightest provocation.

We have multiple characters from both sides of the divide, but our main character is Iain, a wounded Jacobite survivor of the battle, who is content with his bookshop until events draw him back into the conspiracies and the Jacobites’ ongoing desire to put their king back on the throne.

It is deeply enmeshed in the politics of the era, but in the way they affected men and women on a day-to-day basis. Inverness seems small and inconsequential, but it’s a microcosm of what’s happening on an almost worldwide basis, with the Jacobites sent to the Americas as indentured slaves, while those endeavouring to bring their king back to the throne move through the European courts. It is a fabulous novel, especially when the mystery of the dead man in Iain’s bookshop begins to unravel.

I’ve been to Culloden on numerous occasions, and a local once stopped me there, walking his dogs, and regaled me with the story of the battle. It was fascinating to stand there and have someone who could bring the battle to life before my eyes, explain everything. It also helps that I’ve visited the locations, and I could envisage much of the environment and how it must have been then. The novel certainly evoked the atmosphere of the location fabulously.

The many characters are also engaging. Donald Mor was perhaps a favourite, along with Tomorod, although it is Iain who carries the narrative.

I loved this book. I’d had it for ages, but then sat down to read it and couldn’t stop. I mean, it involved a bookshop and then a mystery!

I’m off to find some more of SG MacLean’s novels.