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The Highlanders of the past, the ghosts of Culloden, had been real, flesh and blood characters with cares and intrigues and sorrows and laughter of their own. The Bookseller of Inverness, a story of revenge and murder set in the Highlands in 1752, was a long time coming. Hector is the most enjoyable character – a kind of adventurer, good-looking and charming and with an eye for the ladies, who have an eye for him too!
S.G MacLean writing paints to life the story in front of you and does an exceptional job with weaving facts and fiction together creating a truly memorable story.A fabulous read from this author , quite history laden but that was right up my street , and the storyline brought it alive for me .
Following the loss at Culloden, many women were also sold by their clan chiefs to pay off their debts to the government and sent into indentured service in America. Many were put onto prison ships to be taken to England for trial and execution, or transported to indentured servitude in North America or the Caribbean. We thrill at Iain MacGillivray’s re-engagement with life, so brilliantly captured in the scene, late in the book, where he ‘flytes’ joyously with another Highland fiddler in a Jacobite stronghold.
He feigns death but then we meet him again several years later, now working as a bookseller of Inverness. I am a big fan of SJ MacLeans Seeker series and her books set in Scotland and I was not disappointed by the Bookseller of Inverness. My knowledge of the conflict between Stuart and Hanover supporters, especially from the point of view of the Scottish Highlanders, is limited, but the author created a believable, detailed and fascinating world. From then on, the story gains pace as Iain puts himself into danger seeking out a missing book which may name those of his contemporaries who are traitors to the cause.
On a deeper level, the author portrays a haunting sense of an occupied country still reeling from the slaughter at Culloden, and from the brutal reprisals that followed. This is an enthralling and riveting historical read, a blend of fact and fiction, that will likely appeal to those interested in Scottish history and the repercussions of the Battle of Culloden. They came to life in my mind, and, fictionalised in the pages of my book, took their place for me once again in the town where they, and I, had been born.It’s such a talent and I’ve no idea how she does it but has certainly done it again for Bookseller of Inverness.
Wounded, his face brutally slashed, he survived only by pretending to be dead as the Redcoats patrolled the corpses of his Jacobite comrades. Having spent the best part of a decade in London with her brilliant CWA dagger-winning creation, Damian Seeker, SG MacLean is very firmly back in her Scottish wheelhouse with The Bookseller of Inverness, says Alis Hawkins. Six years later in 1752, with the clan chiefs routed and the Highlands subsumed into the British state, Iain lives a very different and quiet life, he is no longer the outgoing man he used to be, and is working as a bookseller in Inverness, with his assistant Richard Dempster, and the talented bookbinder, Donald Mor.The novel begins with a prologue in which prisoners taken after the unsuccessful Jacobite rising in 1715 are plotting escape. The initial plot itself is probably the weakest part of the book, although it’s just about strong enough to carry it. Shona MacLean, author of two well-received historical series, adopts initials for her latest sortie into historical crime fiction. The necessary information is supplied in an accessible form, and the intrigue keeps the reader’s interest peaked. If you have ever wanted to go back in time to a dangerous yet captivating period of history, this is the book for you.
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