BOOK REVIEW - DOUG JOHNSTONE AND HIS ‘THE BIG CHILL’

 Book Review.            The Big Chill

Author.                       Doug Johnstone 

Publisher.                   Orenda Books

The front cover gives a bit away with a gurney and a quote ‘Nothing is as cold as the grave’.

In case you may think I have a penchant for death, destruction and any old ‘blood & guts’ then the excuse I will use that this is one of the books on the long list for the forthcoming Harrogate Crime Writers Festival in July. We hope to be there.

I love locations and this book is full of them. It is set in Edinburgh and many routes are described and if he is correct then you can find your own way around with out a map. Not over done, but I do like to know where I am at!

I have never read Doug Johnstone before and then I realized this is book number two in the lives of the family Skelfs. That’s a bit of a bugger really as I am now tempted to read the first one but with 18 books on the long list I could read before next week it will have to go on my own long list!

So back to this one. The Skelfs are involved in the funeral business. In fact three generations of them are, but with the founder - a man of course, now deceased - this family firm are run by women. They do get a bit of help from the male embalmer and on the side they are P.I.s and seem willing to take on any one and anything. It makes for very good reading. It is wonderful and personal.

There is a very important thread that I have missed out deliberately in that one member of this family is not very nice!. It is an integral part as well as all the dead and investigations they conduct. No more clues, though. There is some touching personal elements interwoven throughout. And each of the women from grandmother, daughter and through to granddaughter have chapters in which they bring the reader up to date. I enjoyed it. It was different. It was entertaining and on another day I will scan the shelves for the first in the Skelfs Series, entitled A Dark Matter.