From Publishers Weekly
The latest installment in the Keith Calder series (after Let Us Prey ) features Keith's daughter Deborah and detective sergeant Ian Fellowes. A newcomer to the town of Newton Lauder, having been posted there only recently from Edinburgh, Ian makes an excellent narrator, introducing the reader to the characters and capturing the town's atmosphere with the fresh observations of an outsider. The local color and bits of Scots language, which happily bring to mind Burns and Stevenson, hold the reader's interest more than does the rather boring mystery, which concerns poaching and murder. There is some role reversal, with Deborah being a better shot than Ian and enunciating all of the pro-hunting arguments, but in the end tradition wins out. Other than the pigeon shoot, there is very little action.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
Keith Calder, the author's gun-expert/sleuth, has a small but crucial role in this balky adventure. The narrator is Detective- Sergeant Ian Fellowes, newly posted from Edinburgh to Calder's Scottish Borders area. Ian is in love with Calder's daughter Deborah, who runs the Pentland Gun Club and one day persuades him to join a pigeon shoot. The day ends with the disappearance of farmer Ian Kerr, whose body turns up days later, loaded with arsenic. Fellowes leads an investigation that drags through old feuds, new poachers, and the tiniest details of each shooter's observations and location--until Calder comes up with the barely comprehensible solution. No joy here for animal activists or for lovers of well-wrought puzzles. Hammond (Whose Dog Are You?, p. 362) has done much, much better. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
