A gripping historical thriller set in Inverness in the wake of the 1746 Battle of Culloden. The battle over, leaving a scene of utter devastation, Jacobite 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. The man refuses to say what he's searching for, and only leaves when Iain closes for the night. Next morning, Iain opens up the 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 is soon embroiled in a web of deceit and a series of old scores to be settled in the ashes of war. You will love the characters, some drawn from history and in particular Iain's grandmother and her friends, the Grand Dames and Donal Mor, the bookbinder. 397pp, paperback.
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