A Cold Highland Wind
Lady Emily Mysteries Book 17
Tasha Alexander
Minotaur Books
October 3rd, 2023
A Cold Highland Wind by Tasha Alexander brings back the character, Lady Emily Aston. In this cozy mystery she and her husband Colin Hargreaves are amateur sleuths.
“I had wanted to write a book in Scotland for a long time and have the setting to gel with the story. After I read this book, Black Tudors, I learned about enslaved people in England at that time. This was the spark for the story. When I first started writing this series it was in the 1890s, a fascinating time because of the enormous social change happening. They had radical ideas like maybe children should not be working 18 hours a day. There were fascinating real people fighting for social change. I wanted to explore how a young woman in that period lives in a very comfortable life; yet finds a broader view of the world. She starts to fight for change.”
In the summer of 1905, Lady Emily, husband Colin Hargreaves, and their three sons eagerly embark on a family vacation at Cairnfarn Castle, the Scottish estate of their dear friend Jeremy, Duke of Bainbridge. Her ten-year-old sons find a body, the duke’s gamekeeper is found murdered on the banks of the loch.
“I wanted to show how Jeremy and Emily have been friends forever. Emily becomes a high society Victorian lady. Jeremy does not want to get married because he does not want to be tied down. He is a Duke and society expects him to provide an heir. Is he really in love with her, or just joking around?”
Handsome Angus Sinclair, the gamekeeper, had a host of enemies: the fiancée he abandoned in Edinburgh, the young woman who had fallen hopelessly in love with him, and the rough farmer who saw him as a rival for her affections. But what is the meaning of the curious runic stone left on Sinclair’s forehead?
Alexander spins a counterpoint tale set in 1676 Cairnfarn of Tansy, a formerly enslaved woman from Tunis who longs to return home but becomes embroiled in one of the many witchcraft trials prevalent in Scotland in that period. The 17th century portions were an interesting and haunting picture of life as well as the treatment of women at that time, especially during the witch hunts.
Yet, Emily believes the murder had nothing to do with the witchcraft. She considers the ferocity of the attack and deduces that it was a crime of passion, because Sinclair seems to have had more than his fair share of jilted admirers.
“I love reading historical novels with two time periods having plots that connect across centuries. History is not a linear course of progress. What people really care about fundamentally does not change. I love playing with the notion of how history changes and using two timelines allows me to do it. Plus, readers can study the setting of Scotland within two different time periods. My next book, Death by Misadventure, comes out in September. It also has two timelines, set in Bavaria, with Emily in her Edwardian time and the second timeline has King Ludwig II who built the famous castle in the Alps that inspired Disney. In all my books Emily must deal with a murder.”
The two-story threads are linked by location and by the local mythology. In 1676 a story is told of a “Moorish” maid, Tansy, and her mistress, Rossalyn, who has been expelled from her home by her brother-in-law after the death of her beloved husband. Tansy had served as Rossalyn’s maid and had come to her a slave, kidnapped from the streets of Tunis. Though Rossalyn had set her free, she nevertheless keeps her as her maid, with Tansy having few options. Both are rumored to practice witchcraft.
“I wanted to explore how people who were servants got to live lavishly in the Court. But it is not OK because they did not have their freedom with someone having control over their existence. Through Rossalyn and Tansy, I explored how there is a friendship between them, yet Tansy was not able to return to her home.”
Alexander weaves the two parallel timelines. This book is set in the wild Scottish Highlands, where an ancient story of witchcraft may hold the key to solving a murder centuries later.
