2020 police procedural mystery, tartan noir, fifth in the Jack
Logan series. Logan and Neish are sent to the island of Canna,
population 47. Well, 46 now.
Not real Canna, as Kirk explains in an afterword; but he didn't
want to invent an island, so he invented a settlement to replace the
one on the real Canna, fair enough.
The victim seems to have been broadly disliked by everyone, but that's
for being a drunken mess who'd leap on any vaguely presentable man,
not the sort of thing that generally inspires murder. And what's going
on with the scarecrows?
I'm glad to say that Kirk has stayed in what I regard as his better
mode, the individual killer with a reason for murdering this specific
person (which may then brew up into other killings as they try to get
away with it) rather than the serial killer who just wants victims
that fit a profile. There's a complication because Logan knew (and
indeed knew) the victim back in their school days, but mostly the
lighter moments here come from the accommodations people make to life
on the island. (There's minimal mobile reception, but wifi everywhere;
but it's off from 10pm to 8am, and not till noon on Sunday as the
Reverend insisted. Oh, he's the victim's father too.)
Enjoyable stuff, in short, and while there isn't much progress in
long-term plots (except at start and end) there is a gap where the
team member killed in the previous book is missing, the standard
"I'll get X to do that" or "I'll tell X, they'll like it" that is very
true to real-life experience of loss.