Under the Haar
A Novel of Deeside
Sir Gregor Mowat, oil magnate turned philanthropist, is found dead beneath a ladder in his own walled garden on a soft Deeside morning. An old man, a wet rung, an unlucky fall. The county grieves and files it.
Except that Sir Gregor was ten days from publishing a memoir that would finally tell the truth about a night in December 1990, when a standby vessel went down off Rattray Head and five men were lost. Everyone assumes the motive must be the old sin. Everyone is wrong.
Detective Inspector Cormac Buchan is fifty-eight, drives a Volvo the colour of cold tea, grows prize leeks, and has never once raised his voice. He is courteous to the point of irritation, he asks the same small question twice, and he holds to a single unfashionable belief: that the world keeps books. Haar and dew and tide and ash all write down what happened, and no matter how careful a man is with paper, he cannot balance the weather.
The first of the DI Cormac Buchan Investigations: a north-east Scottish murder mystery of quiet menace, dry warmth, and a detective who wins by being underestimated.