Detective Chief Inspector Gwendraeth James makes his debut in this captivating mystery set near the sea and mountains of West Wales. The story begins with a murder in the present and ends in a thrilling series of revelations that shake the foundations of the past.
Martin James (no relation) comes from a privileged background and is the inheritor of funds from a family trust based on income from the most beautiful Georgian mansion in West Wales, Plas Wern Las. Gwendraeth James is a former scholarship boy who had to take two busses just to get to school in the morning.
Martin and Gwendraeth share the same last name, but they couldn’t be more different. They didn’t like each other at school and almost thirty years hasn’t improved anything. When these two antagonists are forced together by the mysterious death of amateur botanist and beekeeper, Parker Merriam, near an old vicarage turned nursing home facing the sea in West Wales, the tension is palpable from the start.
Mystery increases page by page when it becomes obvious that Parker Merriam’s death was no accident. Martin James is forced to revisit the site of his childhood and come to terms with the current inhabitant of Plas Wern Las, now a Buddhist retreat.
Gwendraeth James must deal with his past too. Plas Wern Las was the site of a gruesome murder decades earlier and he feels it has not in any way been cleansed by Buddhist practice. His elderly uncle, Edward James, was a young policeman involved in the investigation and has has his own secrets to tell.
Looming over all of this, and pointing to the possibility of more murder, is the spectre of the scrimshaw skeleton, a beautiful but sinister memento created by Martin’s great uncle, the seafarer Josiah James, whose own secrets remain intact until the very last page.
Laden with atmosphere, irresistible and unsettling by turns, The Scrimshaw Skeleton is a debut that occurs once in a generation. DCI Gwendraeth James alternates between truculence and brilliance in a way that leaves you wanting more from this gifted, complicated, and fascinating detective.
Read, listen, and watch The Scrimshaw Skeleton.
