The Lady in the Loch (New Version)

When a woman’s bones are found in the icy dregs of the noxious Nor’ Loch, newly appointed sheriff of Edinburgh, Walter Scott, is called upon. Are these the remains of a drowned witch or religious heretic, or are they perhaps linked to something more recent and sinister? For although Edinburgh is known to be the center of literature, science, and medicine, it is also the haunt of body snatchers who prey upon the living and the dead alike, selling their victims for study by the student physicians at the medical school. When a band of Travelling People is forced to winter near the city, two young women are taken, one from her bed while she sleeps near her family. Justice from the settled people is rarely accorded to gypsies and the Travellers fear they will be murdered one by one by the ghouls stalking their people. A young gypsy named Midge Margret is sure that Scott will care. He befriended her family before and once more he promises to help find the murderer who prowls the snowy forest in a black coach. When a patchwork woman with supernatural strength begins hunting the streets as well, Scott and Midge Margret know the crimes are rooted in bloody dark magic. In order to catch the killer, the butchered victims themselves must testify. By Nebula Award winning author Elizabeth Ann Scarborough. Publisher's Weekly says, "Skillfully cross-stitching history, mystery and old-time urban legend... tension mounts steadily... an artful work."

From Publishers Weekly

Skillfully cross-stitching history, mystery and old-time urban legend, Scarborough (author of the Nebula-winning The Healer's War) weaves a tale set in 1880s Edinburgh. An armless skeleton that is discovered in the city's partly drained Nor Loch spurs this novel of infatuation, death and magic. Gypsy girls are disappearing into dark carriages and the noddies?bodysnatchers?are thought responsible, for fresh corpses are fetching a pretty penny from medical schools. The story follows three basic plot lines. One features Midge Margret, a gifted palm reader, who searches for the snatched girls and seeks the help of (the) Sir Walter Scott, the city's new sheriff. The second features Scott, as he mingles with the society of Edinburgh and ruminates on writing. He doesn't know how close he is to solving the case of the missing girls until the solution literally jumps out and grabs him. "Physician's notes" sprinkled throughout the text make up the third plot line, which offers a disturbing portrait of the villain behind the crimes. Much of the dialogue is told in broad Scots dialect that, though difficult to navigate, suits perfectly a world where corpses accuse their murderers, wounds bleed anew if touched by those who caused them and "corpse lights" lead the way to lost bodies. Tension mounts steadily, while the resolution is both satisfying and in keeping with the roles that magic and meaningful coincidence play in this artful work. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

When local authorities discover bones in the loch near Edinburgh, new sheriff Walter Scott takes charge of an investigation that expands to include a newly arrived community of gypsies, whose fabulous stories and legends gain Scott's sympathetic ear and stimulate his writer's imagination. Combining historical mystery with dark fantasy, Scarborough (The Godmother's Apprentice, LJ 11/15/95) creates an intriguing and beguiling tale that should appeal to fans of period fiction and old-style horror. Suitable for most fantasy collections.Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

Hardly has aspiring author Walter Scott (yes, that Walter Scott) assumed the post of Edinburgh's sheriff than the city is rocked by a crime spree out of The Silence of the Lambs. A recently slain young woman rises from the coffin to accuse her murderer in rude verse; a spectral coach is linked to a series of kidnapings; and a jumble of bones pulled out of a half-frozen loch suggest that the flower of Edinburgh has been in danger for years. A series of cackling diary entries soon reveals the agent of the abductions: a madman intent on stealing a broad enough menu of body parts to reanimate his lost love. And just as this mysterious kidnapper anticipates his near-contemporary Frankenstein, Scarborough makes it clear that her lady in the lake anticipates the lady Scott will later immortalize in poetry. Though the terror runs highest among the gypsies whose ranks are most cruelly thinned by the hunter of vital organs, the obvious suspects (perhaps a little too obvious) are the upper-class swells among Scott's own acquaintance. Connoisseurs of crossover fiction, however, will note a full meed of dismemberments, ghostly possessions, and demi-resurrections (don't count anybody out of the action just because she's dead) before the culprit is brought to book. Sadly, the homicidally forlorn lover is so industrious in his scarifying work that fantasist Scarborough (The Godmother's Apprentice, 1995, etc.) has little time to spare for the puir wee lady in the loch. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Reviews

News