I’m a big fan of Skye. The drive from my home village of Carrbridge to the island is one of my favourites. Being a west coaster (born in Greenock on the Clyde), heading into the west feels like going home.
When I first met Rhona in
Driftnet, I decided to make her adopted and her adopted parents come from Skye. Spending time on the island during her childhood, she loves the place.
When life gets too hectic for me, I always imagine heading west to a little cottage beside the sea. I expect that’s why after the horror of
Sins of the Dead, a traumatised Rhona heads for that cottage on Skye with its blue painted door right next to the shore… her parents’ island home and hers as her younger self.
She goes there to heal, she hopes, and to find the person she was before
Sins of the Dead, before she lost faith in her ability to do her job.
DI Wilson wanted her to go to Castlebrae, where folk traumatised by front line duty are helped, but Rhona refuses to do that. At the end of
Sins of the Dead, McNab takes her by motorbike to Skye instead.
That journey affects them both. Rhona sees the route often travelled in a whole new light. McNab, the urban warrior finds himself entranced by riding his Harley on the open road, with Rhona as his passenger.
As
Time for the Dead opens we find Rhona still struggling with the fallout from
Sins of the Dead, despite all her efforts to put the past behind her. With Chrissy, McNab and DI Wilson anxiously watching from afar and keen for her to return to the fold, she is still stuck in that other world, the world where scents and sounds can send her back into remembered horror.
Her cover is good. She chats to McNab dutifully on Skype. She hillwalks with Jamie McColl, who she knew as a teenager, but still she is stuck in no man’s land until one day, taken to A.C.E. Target Sports by Jamie, who’s arranging a stag do there for a friend…Rhona meets a Border collie called Blaze, who changes everything.
Taken by Blaze to a spot in the woods on the hill behind A.C.E. Target Sports, she discovers what appears to be a crime scene…or is it?
Thus begins the re-awakening of Rhona’s forensic desire to discover the truth, in particular how the horror of an incident in the war in Afghanistan may be playing out its conclusion on the Isle of Skye.
~o~
Please buy
Time for the Dead from your local bookstore, where there may be signed copies.
You can order
Time for the Dead on Amazon too.
