A Remote Shoreline – a Lethal Killer…..
Book #17 of 18 in the Rhona MacLeod series of crime novels set in Scotland.
Lin Anderson, a Scottish author, is known for her bestselling crime series featuring forensic scientist Dr. Rhona MacLeod. The series takes place in Scotland. Dr. MacLeod’s home base is in Glasgow, but she is called out to crime scenes all over Scotland.
Synopsis of The Wild Coast
Summertime has brought vacationers to the West Coast of Scotland for camping and hiking along the coastline. Suddenly, campsites are becoming crime scenes when lone visitors disappear.
A young woman (Callie) sets her camper up near the seashore and meets the family camping in the next site. The family’s two children, Orlando and his little 4-year-old sister Lucy, are fascinated by the woman’s kayak as she prepares to take it out to the water. She promises to give them a ride in the kayak the next day.
The following morning, little Lucy seems to have disappeared. When her mother, Francine, and her brother go to see if she had wandered over to Callie’s camper, they find the door unlocked and blood and vomit inside the camper. Panicked, Francine calls the police and a search begins. Lucy is finally found standing near a site which looks as if it could be a grave, but she is in a fearful state and not speaking.
When the police determine that the site is indeed a grave, Forensic scientist Rhona MacLeod is brought in and as she and her assistant, Chrissy, unearth the body and carefully collect evidence to analyse, they are disturbed by a bundle of twigs crafted into a stickman and left in the victim’s mouth.
With young Lucy safely back with her family, a search begins for Callie. Not only does she appear to be missing, but a similar stick man had been left in her camper. The police and forensic scientist Rhona suspect that the body and the missing woman are connected.
Back in Glasgow, Rhona and Chrissy continue analysing the evidence collected at the gravesite and from the missing woman’s camper while the police continue searching for Callie. Then another young woman who had stopped for an overnight camping trip on the coast disappears.
Meanwhile, rumors of sexual assault offenses by police officers are circling in Glasgow centered around a popular club. Then the body from the gravesite is identified as a Glasgow girl who had been reported missing two months earlier. When it was discovered that the girl had disappeared from the very same Glasgow nightclub, the police and Rhona MacLeod are convinced all these events are connected. Do the children from the camp, Lucy and Orlando, have some of the answers?
All the while a young woman’s life is on the line and the clock is ticking . . .
Summary
As lone visitors disappear from the wild coast of rural northwest Scotland, campsites are becoming crime scenes. Rhona MacLeod and her assistant Chrissy, working with the Glasgow police, search for the lethal killer. A tense and chilling crime novel with a surprise ending.
*The Wild Coast book review was written by Wednesday Elf
