Review: Murder at Castle Traprain

Murder at Castle Traprain by Jackie Baldwin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The backstory, fair warning I haven't read the first book in this series. Grace McKenna was a high-flying detective in the Edinburgh police force, until her son Connor's suicide sent her spiralling. Her marriage to Brodie, also a detective but far less driven, did not survive and he is now dating Julie, the (much younger) daughter of Grace's old Superintendent.

Now Grace runs a detective agency, assisted by her friend Jean and Connor's girlfriend Hannah who didn't have a chance to tell Connor she was pregnant before he died. Now Brodie, Grace and Jean help Hannah look after her toddler Jack.

Grace is called to Castle Traprain to investigate what appears to be a locked room mystery. The owner, Russian millionaire Sacha Komorov, has recently acquired an Imperial Faberge egg to give to his wife Katya, a former ballerina whose career was cut short when her dance partner dropped her. He hosted a dinner party for friends and neighbours to show them the egg, but when he took them down to the vault it was missing.

Shortly after accepting the assignment, and planting Hannah as a maid, Katya also approaches Grace, she has been receiving threatening letters and disturbing toys (fake Faberge eggs containing a toy ballerina with a broken leg etc).

Neither of the Komorovs wants to call in the police so Grace and her team must investigate alone, until the Russian housekeeper is found poisoned in her office.

As Brodie and Grace pursue their separate investigations they can't help but wonder if there is a link between them. But as the body count rises it seems they have a psychopath escalating out of control.

I thought the Russian angle was a bit over-egged with references to FSB, ballerinas, defecting, Faberge eggs etc. It felt a bit like the author had just thrown everything they knew that was Russian at the book. And yet strangely there was no attempt to create Russian accents/speech patterns or even Scottish ones which left me feeling that the book didn't really establish itself as being set in Scotland.

Overall, this was a pleasant read, there's a lot of backstory about Grace and Brodie which serves as an overarching story. Verdict? I'd read more in the series on Kindle Unlimited or if they were free but I don't think I would pay for them

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley for an honest review.

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