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LAST SEEN IN ABERDEEN
by M. G. Kincaid
Pocket Books, November 2004
304 pages
$6.50
ISBN: 0743467574


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Seth Mornay's job was bad enough before he found the body of ten-year-old Matthew Adair in the back of an overturned horse trailer very early one cold, wet, November morning. His former supervisor and bane of his existence, DI Byrne, had been transferred after the debacle in Glen Ross; his replacement is DI Laina Gordon. The fact that her father is deputy justice minister of the Scottish Executive doesn't hurt her career path one little bit.

The PR department of the Grampian police is using a video clip of Mornay as part of their recruitment program. Now that Adair has been found, Byrne is returning to help with the investigation; DI Gordon's father (Lord Murdo Gordon) is turning the Adair case into a media circus and Byrne may, or may not, help with that aspect of the case. The Gordon family tree is complicated, and all too relevant to the plot, so pay attention.

Another of Mornay's cases has a direct connection to his personal life. The Sunward, a fishing trawler manufactured by Mornay's father, exploded and killed several people. The hull had been modified, and Mornay wonders what the Sunward was really hauling, since it certainly wasn't fish. His father is uncooperative, to say the least.

Mornay's personal life is not going well, either. His best friend Victoria has stopped speaking to him, a direct result of a brief affair Mornay had with Victoria's drug-addicted sister Pamela. Pamela is now pregnant and in a coma. Victoria is planning on suing for custody of the child Pamela is carrying; Mornay wants to raise the child himself.

Kincaid takes the complicated character of Seth Mornay, as revealed in LAST VICTIM IN GLEN ROSS, and fills in some of the blank spaces. She fleshes out his assistant, Constable Claire Gillespie, while still leaving lots of questions to be answered somewhere down the line. She lets us see how Mornay's life, at least what we know of it, made him the man he is. Still, there are gaping holes in his history. The Gordon family, while probably wealthier than that of most readers, is just as complex and blended as any family in today's real world. Kincaid's plotting is quite good; I knew who the bad guy was fairly early on but couldn't figure out the why and how of it at all.

I think Kincaid has improved as a writer since LAST VICTIM IN GLEN ROSS; I look forward to the next in the series. If you like dark police procedurals set in Scotland, read Kincaid. If you like McDermid, read Kincaid. I can't honestly say that Kincaid is as good as McDermid, but she's headed in that direction.

Reviewed by P. J. Coldren, November 2004

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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