When her wife is invited to a fancy, tony wedding at a beautiful, remote castle in Scotland, DS Roberta Steele decides to crash it, promising to behave herself, though soon she’s drunkenly offended everyone and passed out on the lawn. Then the body of the father of the bride is found impaled on some deer antlers in the hall, and a storm has cut the castle off from civilisation and low enforcement. Steele has to take control, but can she solve the crime while surviving the wrath of her wife and the hangover from Hell?

Stuart MacBride is the author of the Logan McRae novels, of which I reviewed House of Burning Bones HERE. DS Roberta Steele was a character in that series, and this is the second book that’s part of her spin off series, with a third to be released soon. MacBride creates very colourful characters, with his McRae series revolving around a serious man surrounded by kooks. It makes for an original line of stories, and adds a little fun and lightness to stories that can be about quite heavy themes. His books are also very Scottish, capturing the mindset and outlook of communities there, sometimes in a fun way, sometimes in reflecting social issues. Sometimes just the mention of Irn Bru.

This book is a lot thinner than the author’s usual entries in the series. I think the length works really well. It’s a knowing homage to Golden Age detective fiction, which were sometimes set at country homes and estates, inspiring a lot of the cozy mysteries of today. The twist here is that rather having the eccentric but gentile Poirot or the wry but ladylike Marple, for example, we have Roberta Steele.

She’s a comic character, a Lesbian whose wife appears to be at her wits end with her and who hates toffs, which are the very people that her wife works with. She’s larger than life, loud, brash. Shouty. She loves to annoy people, and that’s pretty fun. I would describe her as a lad, which I think means you’ll maybe find her either irritating or hilarious. She reads like a Lesbian written by a man. She constantly leers at and hits on other women, joking about “converting” them, including in front of her wife. Crashing the wedding is one thing, and could be funny, but her wife asks her not to ruin her career, she tells her that this wedding party involves people she works with, could Roberta please behave? She doesn’t bother to try and behave. Ruining your partners career and business relationships, and things that matter to them is pretty cruel and the way she knows she can get around her wife and be forgiven is really sad. It’s not cute or funny. For me, lad culture is pretty sad and toxic, so I didn’t find some of this landed as funny for me.

I didn’t hate this book though. I think the mystery was interesting, with all the little things problems that they had blocking them because of the weather, and trying to investigate as professionally as they can under the circumstances. I think some of the chaos was really funny. There was a chef character that our DS has some funny and well written interaction with. I liked the idea of playing with the Golden Era, locked in mystery and the way that a modern policeman might respond to that, or even how one of MacBride’s characters would interact with that. And those older mysteries were often not super long, and this one wasn’t either. I think it worked over all.

I like a comedy mystery sometimes, I think it’s a nice change of pace. Some of the political commentary on class and hating the Tories was repetitive, but I suspect it may be part of the Roberta Steele that everyone knows from the series. It was a bit of a romp, really. It has vibes and atmosphere, and it was plotted quite well. If you like this author, look out for this one, and others in this spin off series.

Read It If: for MacBride or Logan McRae fans, or if you ever wondered how DS Roberta Steele would investigate an Agatha Christie-esque crime. A fun romp, but the laddish humour may not be for everyone.

WIth thanks to PGC Books for the copy of this book for review.