Add T. Frank Muir to the list of Scots, from Conan Doyle to Rankin and McDermid, who write great mysteries: Hand for a Hand, Muir's U.S. debut, is the first in a series of novels starring Detective Chief Inspector Andy Gilchrist.
A severed hand is found in the famous Road Hole bunker on the Old Course in St. Andrews, and Gilchrist is brought in to investigate. It's holding a note, addressed to Gilchrist, with one word written on it: "Murder." It's personal. Why? When a second hand, this one with paint in the nails, is found in another bunker of the golf course with another note ("Massacre"), he thinks about his son Jack's girlfriend, Chloe, a painter. When it's confirmed the hand is indeed her's, Gilchrist knows she's dead. Then a leg is found, also near the course, with the word "Bludgeon," branded into the skin, and it all hits him like a "wave of despair." (It doesn't help matters that he's been forced by his supervisor to work with a detective he caught having sex with his teenage daughter.)
The sense of pain and futility hovers over the book like a damp, Scottish fog. Watching Muir slowly and carefully navigate Gilchrist's overcoming it to find the killer is just one of the bright joys in this smart and contemplative novel. --Tom Lavoie, former publisher