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The Skelfs #1
A Dark Matter
Three generations of women from the Skelfs family take over the family funeral home and PI businesses in the first book of a taut, gripping page-turning and darkly funny new series.
Meet the Skelfs: well-known Edinburgh family, proprietors of a long-established funeral-home business, and private investigators...
When patriarch Jim dies, it's left to his wife Dorothy, daughter Jenny and granddaughter Hannah to take charge of both businesses, kicking off an unexpected series of events.
Dorothy discovers mysterious payments to another woman, suggesting that Jim wasn't the husband she thought he was. Hannah's best friend Mel has vanished from university, and the simple adultery case that Jenny takes on leads to something stranger and far darker than any of them could have imagined.
As the women struggle to come to terms with their grief, and the demands of the business threaten to overwhelm them, secrets from the past emerge, which change everything...
A compelling, tense and shocking thriller and a darkly funny and warm portrait of a family in turmoil, A Dark Matter introduces a cast of unforgettable characters, marking the start of an addictive new series.
Meet the Skelfs: well-known Edinburgh family, proprietors of a long-established funeral-home business, and private investigators...
When patriarch Jim dies, it's left to his wife Dorothy, daughter Jenny and granddaughter Hannah to take charge of both businesses, kicking off an unexpected series of events.
Dorothy discovers mysterious payments to another woman, suggesting that Jim wasn't the husband she thought he was. Hannah's best friend Mel has vanished from university, and the simple adultery case that Jenny takes on leads to something stranger and far darker than any of them could have imagined.
As the women struggle to come to terms with their grief, and the demands of the business threaten to overwhelm them, secrets from the past emerge, which change everything...
A compelling, tense and shocking thriller and a darkly funny and warm portrait of a family in turmoil, A Dark Matter introduces a cast of unforgettable characters, marking the start of an addictive new series.
344 pages, Paperback
First published November 21, 2019
390 people are currently reading
1777 people want to read
About the author
Doug Johnstone
31 books253 followersDoug Johnstone is a writer, musician and journalist based in Edinburgh. His fourth novel, Hit & Run, was published by Faber and Faber in 2012. His previous novel, Smokeheads, was published in March 2011, also by Faber. Before that he published two novels with Penguin, Tombstoning (2006) and The Ossians (2008), which received praise from the likes of Irvine Welsh, Ian Rankin and Christopher Brookmyre. Doug is currently writer in residence at the University of Strathclyde. He has had short stories appear in various publications, and since 1999 he has worked as a freelance arts journalist, primarily covering music and literature. He grew up in Arbroath and lives in Portobello, Edinburgh with his wife and two children. He loves drinking malt whisky and playing football, not necessarily at the same time.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 331 reviews
January 12, 2020
So you say you are going to take over the family business...hmmm you sure you can handle that?! A Dark Matter, is in fact dark indeed. Dark in all my favorite ways. It was a gritty, humorous at times read, that was all kinds of wrong. Just read the opening paragraph and you will be hooked! Go ahead and peek, you know you want to.
When Jim Skelf passes away the family business must go on. Except the family business is a "hands on" type of work, one where you can't be afraid to get a little dirt on your hands....literally...or some bodily fluids...the family business is a funeral home- they handle everything from picking up the bodies to hosting the funeral. So when Jenny Skelf decides to take over for her father and her 70 year old mother decided to help, well things get interesting. Add in the fact that dear dad was also a private investigator things get all kinds of crazy.
Digging up corpses, missing people, things that go bump in the night, human BBQ's....yes, I just said there was a human BBQ, you heard right. This book has so much going on that you would think it would be hard to keep track, but it all flowed nicely. Working in emergency medicine, I enjoy a bit of dark, deathly humor and the author deliverers this nicely. I have to admit that some details did make a cringe a bit, but it just added to the atmospheric vibes. Several mysteries going on that all were nicely wrapped up in the end kept me highly engaged the entire book.
Wait, what this is going to be a series???!!! YES please! I can't wait for the next book. Sign this girl up for book #2!!
A huge thanks to Anne Carter and Orenda Books for this ARC.
When Jim Skelf passes away the family business must go on. Except the family business is a "hands on" type of work, one where you can't be afraid to get a little dirt on your hands....literally...or some bodily fluids...the family business is a funeral home- they handle everything from picking up the bodies to hosting the funeral. So when Jenny Skelf decides to take over for her father and her 70 year old mother decided to help, well things get interesting. Add in the fact that dear dad was also a private investigator things get all kinds of crazy.
Digging up corpses, missing people, things that go bump in the night, human BBQ's....yes, I just said there was a human BBQ, you heard right. This book has so much going on that you would think it would be hard to keep track, but it all flowed nicely. Working in emergency medicine, I enjoy a bit of dark, deathly humor and the author deliverers this nicely. I have to admit that some details did make a cringe a bit, but it just added to the atmospheric vibes. Several mysteries going on that all were nicely wrapped up in the end kept me highly engaged the entire book.
Wait, what this is going to be a series???!!! YES please! I can't wait for the next book. Sign this girl up for book #2!!
A huge thanks to Anne Carter and Orenda Books for this ARC.
June 1, 2021
A Dark Matter tells the story of 3 women, grandmother, mother and granddaughter, Dorothy, Jenny, and Hannah, respectively, of the Skelf family. Each is a fully individualized person with her own unique good and bad characteristics. I liked all three, but I was particularly drawn to Dorothy and Hannah.
Dorothy at seventy is in excellent health, but has just lost her husband, Jim, after fifty years of marriage to the seemingly good man. Dorothy and Jim ran a successful funeral home with an investigative service on the side. After his death, some secrets Jim was keeping threaten Dorothy's memories and leave her searching for answers.
Their daughter, Jenny, always a bit of a free spirit, has been piling on bad karma over the years, she just lost her job, her husband left her after an adulterous affair and now her father has passed. The only good thing in her life is Hannah, her whip smart and independent daughter who seems to be more grounded than her mother ever was.
These three have to tackle their grief, run a funeral home, and get on with life. None of these tasks is for the weak, but the Skelf women are tough as nails and uncompromising. They don't flinch from the tough stuff. This is a terrific story with marvelous women and a writer who knows what makes women tick.
Dorothy at seventy is in excellent health, but has just lost her husband, Jim, after fifty years of marriage to the seemingly good man. Dorothy and Jim ran a successful funeral home with an investigative service on the side. After his death, some secrets Jim was keeping threaten Dorothy's memories and leave her searching for answers.
Their daughter, Jenny, always a bit of a free spirit, has been piling on bad karma over the years, she just lost her job, her husband left her after an adulterous affair and now her father has passed. The only good thing in her life is Hannah, her whip smart and independent daughter who seems to be more grounded than her mother ever was.
These three have to tackle their grief, run a funeral home, and get on with life. None of these tasks is for the weak, but the Skelf women are tough as nails and uncompromising. They don't flinch from the tough stuff. This is a terrific story with marvelous women and a writer who knows what makes women tick.
March 19, 2020
We meet the Skelfs on the day that they are saying goodbye to their patriarch, Jim. They are doing this in a somewhat bizarre way. Though they run a funeral home, they are having an illegal funeral pyre in their backyard - as requested by Jim...
Jim's passing greatly affects those he has left behind. For one thing, the business must go on and the fact that the family are surrounded by death on a daily basis makes the loss of Jim even more poignant.
"Maybe life is just a succession of diversion tactics, moments to keep you busy, stop you thinking about the big stuff."
The Skelfs have two businesses which they run out of their large Victorian house in Edinburgh. They run a funeral parlour AND a private detective agency.
Now that Jim has passed away, it is up to the three strong Skelf women to carry on his legacy.
Dorothy Skelf - 70 years old and Jim's widow. She grew up in California, but has lived in Edinburgh for the past fifty years as Jim's wife and business partner. She is very fit for her age due to her love of yoga and her passion for playing the drums.
Jim's passing has left her reeling. Apparently Jim had kept secrets from her, and now she is unsure of everything. She had thought that they shared everything, but now... she doesn't know what to think. Grieving, and feeling betrayed by her husband's lies, she enlists her friend Thomas, who just happens to be a policeman, to help her discover just what Jim was up to for all those years.
Jenny - Jim and Dorothy's daughter is a divorcée in her early forties. A freelance journalist, she finds out that she has lost her job on the day of her father's funeral. With rent to pay, she reluctantly joins the family firm. She hasn't lived at home for twenty-five years, and she finds the adjustment is a challenge. She works more on the private detective side of the business than the funeral side.
Hannah - Jenny's daughter and Dorothy's granddaughter, is 20 years old. She is in a lesbian relationship with Indy, who works for the family firm and is training to be a funeral director. Hannah goes to university and is studying quantum physics. She is devastated when Melanie, her flatmate and fellow student goes missing... She enlists her family's private detective agency to investigate, doing some of the legwork herself.
Schrödinger - the Skelf family's ginger tabby, was a welcome diversion throughout the novel. Aloof, yet affectionate, Schrödinger was fond of bringing home dead birds for his family...
"...we all compartmentalise, we make excuses to ourselves, justify decisions, ignore the awful things we do because the alternative is to accept that we're bastards."
MY THOUGHTS
After reading Doug Johnstone's brilliant "The Breakers" last year I was more than eager to read his next book. "A Dark Matter", the first book in a new series, more than met my expectations.
With an unique family dynamic, and an even more unique family business, this story had me hooked from the beginning. And what a beginning! The first line reads "Her Dad took much longer to burn than she expected."
In addition to the family's personal stories, I enjoyed following the cases they were working on throughout the book.
The novel explores how we have many sides to our personalities and how we display these different sides to different people - at different times - throughout our lives.
Written with an engaging dark humour, this crime novel displayed a richness in characterization along with unique and clever plotting that made the story stand out from its peers. With themes of betrayal, family secrets, deception and loss, the book reads as a pleasing cross between crime thriller and literary fiction. The three strong female protagonists captured my interest and the I am eager to read more about their lives and exploits in further books in the Skelfs series.
Jim's passing greatly affects those he has left behind. For one thing, the business must go on and the fact that the family are surrounded by death on a daily basis makes the loss of Jim even more poignant.
"Maybe life is just a succession of diversion tactics, moments to keep you busy, stop you thinking about the big stuff."
The Skelfs have two businesses which they run out of their large Victorian house in Edinburgh. They run a funeral parlour AND a private detective agency.
Now that Jim has passed away, it is up to the three strong Skelf women to carry on his legacy.
Dorothy Skelf - 70 years old and Jim's widow. She grew up in California, but has lived in Edinburgh for the past fifty years as Jim's wife and business partner. She is very fit for her age due to her love of yoga and her passion for playing the drums.
Jim's passing has left her reeling. Apparently Jim had kept secrets from her, and now she is unsure of everything. She had thought that they shared everything, but now... she doesn't know what to think. Grieving, and feeling betrayed by her husband's lies, she enlists her friend Thomas, who just happens to be a policeman, to help her discover just what Jim was up to for all those years.
Jenny - Jim and Dorothy's daughter is a divorcée in her early forties. A freelance journalist, she finds out that she has lost her job on the day of her father's funeral. With rent to pay, she reluctantly joins the family firm. She hasn't lived at home for twenty-five years, and she finds the adjustment is a challenge. She works more on the private detective side of the business than the funeral side.
Hannah - Jenny's daughter and Dorothy's granddaughter, is 20 years old. She is in a lesbian relationship with Indy, who works for the family firm and is training to be a funeral director. Hannah goes to university and is studying quantum physics. She is devastated when Melanie, her flatmate and fellow student goes missing... She enlists her family's private detective agency to investigate, doing some of the legwork herself.
Schrödinger - the Skelf family's ginger tabby, was a welcome diversion throughout the novel. Aloof, yet affectionate, Schrödinger was fond of bringing home dead birds for his family...
"...we all compartmentalise, we make excuses to ourselves, justify decisions, ignore the awful things we do because the alternative is to accept that we're bastards."
MY THOUGHTS
After reading Doug Johnstone's brilliant "The Breakers" last year I was more than eager to read his next book. "A Dark Matter", the first book in a new series, more than met my expectations.
With an unique family dynamic, and an even more unique family business, this story had me hooked from the beginning. And what a beginning! The first line reads "Her Dad took much longer to burn than she expected."
In addition to the family's personal stories, I enjoyed following the cases they were working on throughout the book.
The novel explores how we have many sides to our personalities and how we display these different sides to different people - at different times - throughout our lives.
Written with an engaging dark humour, this crime novel displayed a richness in characterization along with unique and clever plotting that made the story stand out from its peers. With themes of betrayal, family secrets, deception and loss, the book reads as a pleasing cross between crime thriller and literary fiction. The three strong female protagonists captured my interest and the I am eager to read more about their lives and exploits in further books in the Skelfs series.
June 14, 2023
This is the story of three strong women from different generations…and it was written spectacularly by a man. Very funny, superbly written and entertaining.
Like I said before this author can really write women, not only did he created in Dorothy a self assured open minded older woman from California that in her 70’s is not afraid of hard work and play a mean set of drums, but he also created Jenny who is a middle age divorced woman, a journalist, a single mother and still discovering herself, in Hannah we have a strong 20’s something with a sensitive nature, an analytical mind and a great partner to another woman. This story was the surprise of the year for me, it had multiple plots and subplots because not only do they operate a funeral home but also a detective agency. When I read the summary of the book I was hesitant thinking the author promised too much on a single book…WOW was I wrong, he delivered a clever story, lots of mysteries and really great characters.
I cannot wait to read the next installment, that is patiently waiting for me on my kindle.
Like I said before this author can really write women, not only did he created in Dorothy a self assured open minded older woman from California that in her 70’s is not afraid of hard work and play a mean set of drums, but he also created Jenny who is a middle age divorced woman, a journalist, a single mother and still discovering herself, in Hannah we have a strong 20’s something with a sensitive nature, an analytical mind and a great partner to another woman. This story was the surprise of the year for me, it had multiple plots and subplots because not only do they operate a funeral home but also a detective agency. When I read the summary of the book I was hesitant thinking the author promised too much on a single book…WOW was I wrong, he delivered a clever story, lots of mysteries and really great characters.
I cannot wait to read the next installment, that is patiently waiting for me on my kindle.
July 26, 2024
This has an interesting premise for a story and there is enjoyable dark humour when we go behind the scenes of the undertaking business. However there are too many characters and they are all overly busy buzzing about doing detectivey stuff for my liking. Okayish.
June 11, 2020
This was great even though it has quite a melancholic and introspective tone, it also has an intense familial feeling of strength and hope.
It is a story of contradictions, death and family; but fundamentally it's a mystery.
All compelling elements in my opinion!
Three generations of one family share their points of view concerning the death of the partriarch, the disappearence of a young student and continuing the family business as funeral directors.
There is an awful lot going on in this story; many secrets, lies and actions!
I was absorbed in the whole thing and even though I found some of the behaviours rather shocking I was still routing for these women.
Great read and listen :)
It is a story of contradictions, death and family; but fundamentally it's a mystery.
All compelling elements in my opinion!
Three generations of one family share their points of view concerning the death of the partriarch, the disappearence of a young student and continuing the family business as funeral directors.
There is an awful lot going on in this story; many secrets, lies and actions!
I was absorbed in the whole thing and even though I found some of the behaviours rather shocking I was still routing for these women.
Great read and listen :)
Read
September 27, 2023Detective novel about three women, gran, mum and dauughter, who run a funeral home with a detective agency on the side. This sounds amazing, and is advertised as a black comedy, but I am not feeling it: it's mostly about grief and betrayal, the three leads are pretty unlikeable, and at 40% the plot still isn't picking up. The series comes very highly recommended so maybe it just takes a while to get going and I should have started with a later book? DNF at 40%
February 28, 2020
Muted execution of a mouth-wateringly original set-up with three generations of one family tackling death & crime.
A Dark Matter introduces the Skelf family and three generations of women whose surname is synonymous with death in the city of Edinburgh. With the family home having doubled as a funeral parlour for the last century and a private investigators for the last decade, wife, daughter and granddaughter are laying patriarch, Jim, to rest in a contrary cremation he explicitly requested. But business must go on even with the man at the helm gone, with seventy-year-old widow, Dorothy, divorced adult daughter, Jenny, and twenty-year-old physics student and granddaughter, Hannah, forced to compartmentalise their own grief. A tough ask when there is literally no escape from mortality as they enable other families to process their own personal grief and nigh on impossible when dark secrets from the past emerge and threaten everything they hold dear.
As Californian native and compassionate yoga loving widow, Dorothy, takes charge of the funeral side of the business and discovers mysterious monthly payments for the last decade she is devastated to realise that the man she shared everything with lied to her. Forced to question her marriage to Jim and determined to get to the bottom of his duplicity, tenacious Dorothy vows to discover the truth. As bitter and broke middle-aged divorcée, Jenny, comes to terms with being unemployed and moving back home the relatively straightforward sounding adultery case she picks up soon becomes far more complex than simply sitting in the van and tailing her target. Meanwhile overearnest student, Hannah, is hit by a fresh tragedy as her best friend from university, Mel, vanishes. Mired in their own grief and without any option but to go on, all three women are about to be tested to their limit as three investigations are set in motion, alongside a backdrop of funeral proceedings.
The premise and the whole set-up of A Dark Matter is something to savour and my disappointment was that the novel proved to be far less exciting than it promised, with sleuthing more akin to the blundering of cosy crime novels. Dorothy’s detective friend, Thomas Olsson, is also on hand to conveniently run DNA tests and interview people willy-nilly making much of what unfolds highly improbable. In this sense apart from some well-placed gallows humour (from Jenny especially) and Johnstone’s realistic attitude to the business of death, the investigations of all three women owe more to a cheesy crime caper. It is only thanks to the plot being so busy that the novel holds the attention as it moves sequentially though each of the trio of women’s individual perspectives and nudges each of their cases onwards ahead of a lively denouement.
The narrative throughout leans heavily towards the politically correct with middle-aged white men getting a bad press for starters. Whilst this does not detract from the novel it feels unnecessarily heavy-handed, likewise the constant referencing back to the physics of matter obviously intended to illustrate that we are bit part players in the wider scheme of things. Dorothy was the strongest of the three protagonists to my mind and a character that I empathised with but dissatisfied Jenny and dull Hannah failed to make a significant impression on me.
Whilst I hope to read more of the Skelf women’s juggling death and private investigation whilst also managing their own life dramas, I am hoping that future outings will be both darker and their unconventional methods of detection will become more credible! With all three generations learning something about themselves in the aftermath of Jim’s death the next instalment has the potential to build on solid series opener and expand on their characterisation.
A Dark Matter introduces the Skelf family and three generations of women whose surname is synonymous with death in the city of Edinburgh. With the family home having doubled as a funeral parlour for the last century and a private investigators for the last decade, wife, daughter and granddaughter are laying patriarch, Jim, to rest in a contrary cremation he explicitly requested. But business must go on even with the man at the helm gone, with seventy-year-old widow, Dorothy, divorced adult daughter, Jenny, and twenty-year-old physics student and granddaughter, Hannah, forced to compartmentalise their own grief. A tough ask when there is literally no escape from mortality as they enable other families to process their own personal grief and nigh on impossible when dark secrets from the past emerge and threaten everything they hold dear.
As Californian native and compassionate yoga loving widow, Dorothy, takes charge of the funeral side of the business and discovers mysterious monthly payments for the last decade she is devastated to realise that the man she shared everything with lied to her. Forced to question her marriage to Jim and determined to get to the bottom of his duplicity, tenacious Dorothy vows to discover the truth. As bitter and broke middle-aged divorcée, Jenny, comes to terms with being unemployed and moving back home the relatively straightforward sounding adultery case she picks up soon becomes far more complex than simply sitting in the van and tailing her target. Meanwhile overearnest student, Hannah, is hit by a fresh tragedy as her best friend from university, Mel, vanishes. Mired in their own grief and without any option but to go on, all three women are about to be tested to their limit as three investigations are set in motion, alongside a backdrop of funeral proceedings.
The premise and the whole set-up of A Dark Matter is something to savour and my disappointment was that the novel proved to be far less exciting than it promised, with sleuthing more akin to the blundering of cosy crime novels. Dorothy’s detective friend, Thomas Olsson, is also on hand to conveniently run DNA tests and interview people willy-nilly making much of what unfolds highly improbable. In this sense apart from some well-placed gallows humour (from Jenny especially) and Johnstone’s realistic attitude to the business of death, the investigations of all three women owe more to a cheesy crime caper. It is only thanks to the plot being so busy that the novel holds the attention as it moves sequentially though each of the trio of women’s individual perspectives and nudges each of their cases onwards ahead of a lively denouement.
The narrative throughout leans heavily towards the politically correct with middle-aged white men getting a bad press for starters. Whilst this does not detract from the novel it feels unnecessarily heavy-handed, likewise the constant referencing back to the physics of matter obviously intended to illustrate that we are bit part players in the wider scheme of things. Dorothy was the strongest of the three protagonists to my mind and a character that I empathised with but dissatisfied Jenny and dull Hannah failed to make a significant impression on me.
Whilst I hope to read more of the Skelf women’s juggling death and private investigation whilst also managing their own life dramas, I am hoping that future outings will be both darker and their unconventional methods of detection will become more credible! With all three generations learning something about themselves in the aftermath of Jim’s death the next instalment has the potential to build on solid series opener and expand on their characterisation.
March 23, 2020
They call this a darkly funny mystery/crime fiction. They called it right. Being first in a series, this novel is more character oriented, with suspense coming in farther along in the book.
Three generations from the Skelf's family are involved in the family funeral home business and a PI business. When patriarch Jim dies, it’s left to his wife Dorothy, daughter Jenny and granddaughter Hannah to take charge of both businesses, kicking off an unexpected series of events.
It's only after they cremate Jim in the back yard, when the family is still grieving his loss, that secrets start to come to light. FIrst .. a letter to another woman. Was he having an affair?
One of Hannah's best friends has disappeared and the simple adultery case that Jenny takes on leads to something stranger and far darker than any of them could have imagined.
I found it a bit slow in the very beginning, while being introduced to all the characters, but when it gets going, the suspense is riveting. It's a family drama, a mystery, filled with secrets and lies that rush to explode in an unexpected ending. No cliffhanger involved ... just a sentence or two to segue into book 2 in the series.
Many thanks to the author for the digital copy of this intense thriller. Read and reviewed voluntarily, opinions expressed here are unbiased and entirely my own.
Three generations from the Skelf's family are involved in the family funeral home business and a PI business. When patriarch Jim dies, it’s left to his wife Dorothy, daughter Jenny and granddaughter Hannah to take charge of both businesses, kicking off an unexpected series of events.
It's only after they cremate Jim in the back yard, when the family is still grieving his loss, that secrets start to come to light. FIrst .. a letter to another woman. Was he having an affair?
One of Hannah's best friends has disappeared and the simple adultery case that Jenny takes on leads to something stranger and far darker than any of them could have imagined.
I found it a bit slow in the very beginning, while being introduced to all the characters, but when it gets going, the suspense is riveting. It's a family drama, a mystery, filled with secrets and lies that rush to explode in an unexpected ending. No cliffhanger involved ... just a sentence or two to segue into book 2 in the series.
Many thanks to the author for the digital copy of this intense thriller. Read and reviewed voluntarily, opinions expressed here are unbiased and entirely my own.
September 25, 2023
A DARK MATTER (The Skelfs #1) is the first thriller novel in the new series by author Doug Johnstone. This is a dark drama crime that featured the Skelf family who run a funeral home and a private investigator business. What a great combination, death and crime and the humour is engaging.
Three generations of women from the Skelfs family take over the family funeral-home and PI businesses in this first dark and funny new series. The Skelfs are a well-known Edinburgh family, proprietors of a long-established funeral-home business, and private investigators. When patriarch Jim dies, it's left to his seventy- year- old wife Dorothy, daughter Jenny and granddaughter Hannah to take charge of both businesses.
The novel alternates in chapters between three generations, Dorothy, wife of the deceased and now head of the family, her daughter, Jenny and her granddaughter, Hannah. All different characters.
I was fascinated with the funeral side of things, and not one that I know much about, but the detail regarding the funeral procedures, shows the amount of research that the author has done to enrich his work.
When Hannah’s best friend roommate, Mel disappears from University, she is ready to get involved in both businesses. Dorothy discovers mysterious payments to another woman, suggesting that Jim wasn't the husband she thought he was. The simple adultery case that Jenny takes on leads to something that none of them could have imagined. As the women struggle to come to terms with their grief, and the demands of the business threaten to devastate them, secrets from the past come to light, which change everything.
A Dark Matter marks the start of a promising addictive new series.
Many thanks to the author, Orenda Books and The Reviewer Request Group (FB) for my digital copy.
Three generations of women from the Skelfs family take over the family funeral-home and PI businesses in this first dark and funny new series. The Skelfs are a well-known Edinburgh family, proprietors of a long-established funeral-home business, and private investigators. When patriarch Jim dies, it's left to his seventy- year- old wife Dorothy, daughter Jenny and granddaughter Hannah to take charge of both businesses.
The novel alternates in chapters between three generations, Dorothy, wife of the deceased and now head of the family, her daughter, Jenny and her granddaughter, Hannah. All different characters.
I was fascinated with the funeral side of things, and not one that I know much about, but the detail regarding the funeral procedures, shows the amount of research that the author has done to enrich his work.
When Hannah’s best friend roommate, Mel disappears from University, she is ready to get involved in both businesses. Dorothy discovers mysterious payments to another woman, suggesting that Jim wasn't the husband she thought he was. The simple adultery case that Jenny takes on leads to something that none of them could have imagined. As the women struggle to come to terms with their grief, and the demands of the business threaten to devastate them, secrets from the past come to light, which change everything.
A Dark Matter marks the start of a promising addictive new series.
Many thanks to the author, Orenda Books and The Reviewer Request Group (FB) for my digital copy.
January 27, 2020
Doug Johnstone’s latest offering is a deliciously dark drama crime mash up featuring the Skelfs, an engaging and quirky family unit that runs a funeral home and private investigator service. It has all the ironic, deep and emotional humour of Six Feet Under with an almost noirish crime undertone that is really engaging.
We get the viewpoint of three generations of Skelf women, each one full of vibrant reality and in turn they take you deep inside the group dynamic that makes up this beautifully resonant often dysfunctional family unit.
There’s a lot to love here especially if like me you love to take a walk on the edgy side of life, but it is also incredibly warming at heart. The story ebbs and flows with clever intelligence, drawing you in and holding you there. Be prepared for inappropriate laughter to escape you at random moments and to miss this lot once you finish the novel almost as if you’d been literally living with them.
No plot details from me, this is a book to read cold, it’s impact is oft unexpected and never have I been so happy to know that there is more to come.
Right now I’m off for a human BBQ. Catch you later fellow book addicts…
September 17, 2020
This is a spectacular start to a new series! I read a review from a lovely Goodreads friend earlier this year and knew this was one to read sooner rather than later.
The Skelf family has long been the proprietors of a funeral home / private investigator business in Edinburgh. When patriarch Jim dies, three generations of women carry on the businesses: his wife Dorothy, daughter Jenny, and granddaughter Hannah.
Dorothy discovers monthly payments from their account to another woman have been going on for years, leading her to believe her husband may not have been the man she thought.
Hannah’s best friend Mel vanishes and the further she investigates, the more shocking secrets she uncovers.
Meanwhile, Jenny is hired by a woman to prove that her husband is cheating on her and refuses to accept that he may actually be faithful. This brings up plenty of raw emotions for Jenny, who divorced Hannah's dad after he had an affair.
Struggling through grief while stepping up in new roles in the family business, all three women find themselves uncovering shocking secrets that make them consider how well we really know anyone.
Chapters alternate the three MCs points of view, creating a flow that urged me to keep flipping the pages and switching between the multiple subplots that I was equally invested in. I enjoyed getting to know these women, the pace of the story, and the shocking ending I didn’t see coming. There’s a healthy balance of dark humor, family drama, and mystery with some unexpected events thanks to unpredictable characters who act on emotion.
For more reviews, visit www.rootsandreads.wordpress.com
The Skelf family has long been the proprietors of a funeral home / private investigator business in Edinburgh. When patriarch Jim dies, three generations of women carry on the businesses: his wife Dorothy, daughter Jenny, and granddaughter Hannah.
Dorothy discovers monthly payments from their account to another woman have been going on for years, leading her to believe her husband may not have been the man she thought.
Hannah’s best friend Mel vanishes and the further she investigates, the more shocking secrets she uncovers.
Meanwhile, Jenny is hired by a woman to prove that her husband is cheating on her and refuses to accept that he may actually be faithful. This brings up plenty of raw emotions for Jenny, who divorced Hannah's dad after he had an affair.
Struggling through grief while stepping up in new roles in the family business, all three women find themselves uncovering shocking secrets that make them consider how well we really know anyone.
Chapters alternate the three MCs points of view, creating a flow that urged me to keep flipping the pages and switching between the multiple subplots that I was equally invested in. I enjoyed getting to know these women, the pace of the story, and the shocking ending I didn’t see coming. There’s a healthy balance of dark humor, family drama, and mystery with some unexpected events thanks to unpredictable characters who act on emotion.
For more reviews, visit www.rootsandreads.wordpress.com
November 19, 2019
When I picked up A Dark Matter by Doug Johnstone, I felt a frisson of excitement, (Breakers one of his previous book is sitting solidly on my list of top reads of 2019) as you are never sure what road the author will take you down, but once again the author has written an impressive book, with remarkable characters. A Dark Matter is certainly different to Breakers but how I loved this book, it’s the first in a series following three generations of Skelf Woman. This is a book that doesn’t fit neatly into one genre, it’s a kind of family saga, thriller, crime thriller all rolled into one, making for an unusual but compelling read.
When the head of the family, Jim Skelf passes away, it’s left to his wife Dorothy, daughter Jenny and granddaughter Hannah to take charge of the family businesses, a funeral-home, and private investigators.Two very different businesses, that are polar opposites, but the two blend perfectly, creating a plot that’s teeming with mystery, dark humour and tension. The story is narrated in alternating chapters by the three women, normally this can cause me issues with the flow of a story, but that’s not the case with A Dark Matter the author moves fluidly between the three POV creating a read that’s seamless.
Doug Johnstone has a knack for creating well-rounded characters, they are characters who get under your skin; you find your thoughts continually returning to them. I admire the fact the author isn’t afraid to create characters who aren’t without flaws, after all none of us are perfect! Neither are they stereotypes, they are likeable, credible, and relatable. The women face overwhelming challenges; we feel their grief, anger, turmoil, and anxiety as they become overwhelmed by hidden secrets, strange disappearances, and adultery. As the three main characters are not bound by rules or regulations, they aren’t afraid to push the boundaries, their techniques aren’t always professional, their unpredictable, rash, led by their emotions, which means you are never sure what they are going to do next, for me personally I thought this made the read even more unpredictable.
As the location for A Dark Matter is a funeral directors, there is some talk of death, and references to what happens to people after death. In the wrong hands this could have made A Dark Matter a gloomy read, but not the author he deals with the subject with a delicate hand, injecting just the correct amount of ‘dark humour’ to lighten the mood, without appearing insensitive. Doug Johnstone captures the reader’s attention from the original opening, tension mounts as each chapter ends, and with a winning combination of diverse characters A Dark Matter is a thriller that begs to be read in one sitting. Highly recommend
All my reviews can be found at www.thebookreviewcafe.com
When the head of the family, Jim Skelf passes away, it’s left to his wife Dorothy, daughter Jenny and granddaughter Hannah to take charge of the family businesses, a funeral-home, and private investigators.Two very different businesses, that are polar opposites, but the two blend perfectly, creating a plot that’s teeming with mystery, dark humour and tension. The story is narrated in alternating chapters by the three women, normally this can cause me issues with the flow of a story, but that’s not the case with A Dark Matter the author moves fluidly between the three POV creating a read that’s seamless.
Doug Johnstone has a knack for creating well-rounded characters, they are characters who get under your skin; you find your thoughts continually returning to them. I admire the fact the author isn’t afraid to create characters who aren’t without flaws, after all none of us are perfect! Neither are they stereotypes, they are likeable, credible, and relatable. The women face overwhelming challenges; we feel their grief, anger, turmoil, and anxiety as they become overwhelmed by hidden secrets, strange disappearances, and adultery. As the three main characters are not bound by rules or regulations, they aren’t afraid to push the boundaries, their techniques aren’t always professional, their unpredictable, rash, led by their emotions, which means you are never sure what they are going to do next, for me personally I thought this made the read even more unpredictable.
As the location for A Dark Matter is a funeral directors, there is some talk of death, and references to what happens to people after death. In the wrong hands this could have made A Dark Matter a gloomy read, but not the author he deals with the subject with a delicate hand, injecting just the correct amount of ‘dark humour’ to lighten the mood, without appearing insensitive. Doug Johnstone captures the reader’s attention from the original opening, tension mounts as each chapter ends, and with a winning combination of diverse characters A Dark Matter is a thriller that begs to be read in one sitting. Highly recommend
All my reviews can be found at www.thebookreviewcafe.com
April 16, 2023
An introduction to the Skelf family. Three generations of women, Dorothy, Jenny and Hannah are left to run the family businesses - an odd mix of a funeral director and private investigator. It is set in Edinburgh and the author gives a great feel of the city without lengthy descriptions. Very good start to this series.
February 17, 2020
A fantastic and truly original whodunnit with three tales going all at once! Loved the characters, the whole premise of this book and hope there are more in a series to come. Many thanks to Orenda for this copy for review.
December 30, 2023
看了简介，我以为这本书会很硬核，就是那种铁血家人携手破案那种。其实不是的，很cozy，读起来很流畅带着小小的幽默。
四星，但是！这可是读书小组的圣诞节活动！Santa帮我挑的书！五颗星！！！
四星，但是！这可是读书小组的圣诞节活动！Santa帮我挑的书！五颗星！！！
March 16, 2023
Her dad took much longer to burn than she expected.What a great beginning! And what a letdown the rest of the book was. The first section is one huge info dump about everyone’s backstories, and about how amazingly (and unbelievably) unusual all the women are. We are hit over the head with how strong, powerful and bollocks-grabbingly fearless these warrior princess women are, and how wonderfully they control the business and yada yada yada, and what a leering lecherous waste of oxygen almost all the men are. I could almost see the author checking off his “cozy chick lit” list: percussionist grandma with a skanky past, middle-aged daughter reeling from a divorce, gay granddaughter with POC girlfriend, some iffy romances with untrustworthy men, a few conventional mysteries (one of them ripped from the internet news) for these 2-dimensional superwomen to solve, what have I forgotten? Oh, a bit of syrupy glurge for readers to drool over:
Hannah frowned. ‘It’s not any different. Men and women, straight and gay, we’re just trying to get along, not hurt anyone, but it doesn’t always work like that.'Urrgh. Having seen the rave reviews mentioning “dark humour” and “noir" I was expecting the sublime entertainments of Six Feet Under and got the Addams Family Widows. On the up side, all this cheesy cheer was balanced somewhat by occasional, somewhat believable details about the dealings and detritus of death.
Jenny smiled. ‘How did I have a daughter so wise?'
Dorothy stood in the embalming room and stared at what was left of Jim…. the bone fragments and dust in front of her were real. And it was dust, not ashes, that was a misnomer. She was thankful that the fire hadn’t left any large bones for her to deal with, nothing longer than a few inches amongst the dirt. She imagined lifting an intact skull from the pile, addressing it like Hamlet. Or one of Jim’s femurs, waving it around like a cavewoman.Yup. 2 stars.
August 11, 2022
Lots of fun if you know Edinburgh well. It blends a crime fiction with a family drama.
Downsides - there are some things in the plot that don't add up as they are too improbable. It didn't keep me from being sucked into the story but it does feel a little ridiculous that some key things were constructed the way they were. For instance, the first page of the novel starts with the cremation of the patriarch of the family, Jim, in his backyard by the rest of the family members. How can something like this go completely unnoticed?
Upside - Doug Johnstone is a gifted storyteller. His content reads very well and the words flow on the pages smoothly.
Downsides - there are some things in the plot that don't add up as they are too improbable. It didn't keep me from being sucked into the story but it does feel a little ridiculous that some key things were constructed the way they were. For instance, the first page of the novel starts with the cremation of the patriarch of the family, Jim, in his backyard by the rest of the family members. How can something like this go completely unnoticed?
Upside - Doug Johnstone is a gifted storyteller. His content reads very well and the words flow on the pages smoothly.
February 29, 2020
3.5 stars
If you’re into dark, edgy and slightly ironically humoured crime drama’s then Doug Johnstone’s ‘A Dark Matter’ is the book for you. I’d never have expected to read a storyline involving a family undertaker’s business that sidelines as a private investigator. However, the author has combined death and crime to produce a decent outing in the first of a new series featuring three generations of strong Scottish women, who take charge of the business after their patriarch dies.
Combining a family drama with grief, secrets, emotions and murder, I enjoyed reading this book although you haven’t got to be frightened of death, as there’s a lot of detail regarding the funeral procedures which may upset some people if recently bereaved. The only thing I’d say about the writing is that for me, I found the numerous references to physics and ‘dark matter’ regarding our existential being, a little overwhelming but only because I don’t quite understand all that intelligent science behind our existence.
The characters are well portrayed but I liked Dorothy, the grandmother and wife to the recently deceased patriarch, very much and found her to be very young at heart and realistic. I would have liked to have seen more between Hannah and her relationship with Indy and think this could be explored further as the series develops.
I’m already looking forward to reading more on the Skelfs original family business with further crimes to solve and different deaths to deal with. The closing of the book has set the next in the series up nicely and I’d happily recommend this author and his many already published books. “A Dark Matter” is an enjoyable read and if you like your novels to be just that little bit different and dark, this will keep you happily entertained and amused.
If you’re into dark, edgy and slightly ironically humoured crime drama’s then Doug Johnstone’s ‘A Dark Matter’ is the book for you. I’d never have expected to read a storyline involving a family undertaker’s business that sidelines as a private investigator. However, the author has combined death and crime to produce a decent outing in the first of a new series featuring three generations of strong Scottish women, who take charge of the business after their patriarch dies.
Combining a family drama with grief, secrets, emotions and murder, I enjoyed reading this book although you haven’t got to be frightened of death, as there’s a lot of detail regarding the funeral procedures which may upset some people if recently bereaved. The only thing I’d say about the writing is that for me, I found the numerous references to physics and ‘dark matter’ regarding our existential being, a little overwhelming but only because I don’t quite understand all that intelligent science behind our existence.
The characters are well portrayed but I liked Dorothy, the grandmother and wife to the recently deceased patriarch, very much and found her to be very young at heart and realistic. I would have liked to have seen more between Hannah and her relationship with Indy and think this could be explored further as the series develops.
I’m already looking forward to reading more on the Skelfs original family business with further crimes to solve and different deaths to deal with. The closing of the book has set the next in the series up nicely and I’d happily recommend this author and his many already published books. “A Dark Matter” is an enjoyable read and if you like your novels to be just that little bit different and dark, this will keep you happily entertained and amused.
June 30, 2020
A Dark Matter starts with the funeral of the patriarch of the Skelf family, Jim Skelf, burning, charring and turning him from a man into ashes and dust in the wind. For forty-five years Jim ran Skelf Funeral Directors out of the family home that doubled as the place of business. A decade ago Jim expanded the established family business branching out into a private investigation agency too that also ran out of the family home.
As the matriarch of the Skelf family and surviving her late husband, Dorothy takes over running the family businesses in place of the deceased Jim. Dorothy is seventy-years-old, moved from California to Edinburgh for love and had been married to Jim for fifty years. She had worked part-time on-and-off with the business in-between raising their daughter Jenny and teaching drumming but, the funeral parlour was Jim’s and he oversaw and ran the day-to-day running of the business and that of the private investigation agency.
After Jim’s death, Dorothy is going through the accounts when she notices something amiss, payments, money that has been taken out of the business account and paid into another account, the same amount taken out monthly and for a decade paid onto the account of another woman.
The revelation that Jim had been taking money out of the business account, on a monthly basis, over years and paying it into the account of another woman is a betrayal for Dorothy. She has been deceived by her late husband. Along with his death, her whole world has been sundered, she is questioning their time together, questioning the man she loved, loves and is mourning and she needs to know what is the reason for the mysterious payments and why Jim kept them hidden them from her.
On the day of Jim’s funeral Jenny, Dorothy and Jim’s divorced mid-forties daughter loses her job as a journalist and with rent to pay when Dorothy asks her to stay at the family home and help run the businesses she accepts. Jenny who didn’t follow in the footsteps of her father and who hasn’t lived at home in twenty-five years takes on a more prominent role in the private investigation side of the business rather than the funeral parlour side where she does occasionally help out when needed. At a funeral the sister of the deceased comes up to Jenny and enquires about the private investigation agency, asking Jenny to take on a case as she believes that her husband is committing adultery and she wants proof to confront him with.
Hannah, a university student, Jenny’s twenty-year-old daughter and Dorothy’s granddaughter rounds out the trio of Skelf women. Hannah’s fellow university student, flatmate and best friend Mel has gone missing. The police aren’t bothered about her disappearance as she isn’t vulnerable, she is an adult, she can do what she wants and if that includes going off and not telling anyone then that is her choice and it is nothing to do with them. With the police offering no help Hannah takes on the role of private investigator and becomes obsessed with finding out the truth behind Mel’s disappearance.
At the same time as Dorothy is looking into Jim’s past and the mystery woman, Jenny is investigating the adultery case and Hannah is desperately searching for her missing friend life goes on. Both the family businesses are open bringing in new cases to investigate, like the elderly man who thinks that his carer is stealing from him and new funerals to plan and prepare. Edinburgh comes to life as a brooding backdrop to the unfolding story and the family home, the funeral parlour, the casket making, picking up the dead bodies, the embalming of the bodies, the dressing of the bodies, the burial and cremation services and all the behind the scenes details that go into preparing a funeral adds something really different and makes for an original concept and setting.
There is some stellar characterisation with the three Skelf women and depth to the emotions that they display. Each in their own way is strong and there is a resilience to them. They are flawed, they are family, they argue, bicker, disagree and fight but, they love each other, join forces, band together and are there for and help one another when needed. With each of the Skelf women being from a different generation, they see through different eyes, some younger, some older with experiences, life and time changing them and they all have a different perspective and way of looking at things. They deal with death on a daily basis, it is part of their everyday life but, it is the grief of others, not their own and there is a barrier. With the death of Jim that barrier is shattered and they have to deal with their own grief and the pain that consumes them. Jim’s death is an open wound, in time it will heal and it will leave a scar but, at the moment all they can do is carry on and try to cope the best that they can with the loss. During A Dark Matter, the Skelf women go through a torrent of emotions and Johnstone does a stellar job of transferring those emotions onto the page, investing you in and making you care about the trio of characters as they navigate cases, funerals, life, death, grief and try to solve the various mysteries that they have found themselves entwined in.
Johnstone has an engaging writing style that is easy-to-read and flows well. Being the first book in the series the story in A Dark Matter is a mix of both character-driven and story-driven. The foundations are set for the characters so that you are able to get a feel for the Skelf women, their personalities and who they are and, there is also more than enough story included to really sink your teeth into. The story is told through the three POV characters of Dorothy, Jenny and Hannah in short and snappy chapters that swap between the trio and that keep the story moving forward as it builds to its gripping and intense climax.
A Dark Matter is the first in an entertaining and dramatic family crime thriller series, more, please! It is compelling and darkly humorous with enough intrigue and suspense, secrets, lies and revelations to fill a grave.
As always this review can also be found on my blog The Tattooed Book Geek: https://thetattooedbookgeek.wordpress...
As the matriarch of the Skelf family and surviving her late husband, Dorothy takes over running the family businesses in place of the deceased Jim. Dorothy is seventy-years-old, moved from California to Edinburgh for love and had been married to Jim for fifty years. She had worked part-time on-and-off with the business in-between raising their daughter Jenny and teaching drumming but, the funeral parlour was Jim’s and he oversaw and ran the day-to-day running of the business and that of the private investigation agency.
After Jim’s death, Dorothy is going through the accounts when she notices something amiss, payments, money that has been taken out of the business account and paid into another account, the same amount taken out monthly and for a decade paid onto the account of another woman.
The revelation that Jim had been taking money out of the business account, on a monthly basis, over years and paying it into the account of another woman is a betrayal for Dorothy. She has been deceived by her late husband. Along with his death, her whole world has been sundered, she is questioning their time together, questioning the man she loved, loves and is mourning and she needs to know what is the reason for the mysterious payments and why Jim kept them hidden them from her.
On the day of Jim’s funeral Jenny, Dorothy and Jim’s divorced mid-forties daughter loses her job as a journalist and with rent to pay when Dorothy asks her to stay at the family home and help run the businesses she accepts. Jenny who didn’t follow in the footsteps of her father and who hasn’t lived at home in twenty-five years takes on a more prominent role in the private investigation side of the business rather than the funeral parlour side where she does occasionally help out when needed. At a funeral the sister of the deceased comes up to Jenny and enquires about the private investigation agency, asking Jenny to take on a case as she believes that her husband is committing adultery and she wants proof to confront him with.
Hannah, a university student, Jenny’s twenty-year-old daughter and Dorothy’s granddaughter rounds out the trio of Skelf women. Hannah’s fellow university student, flatmate and best friend Mel has gone missing. The police aren’t bothered about her disappearance as she isn’t vulnerable, she is an adult, she can do what she wants and if that includes going off and not telling anyone then that is her choice and it is nothing to do with them. With the police offering no help Hannah takes on the role of private investigator and becomes obsessed with finding out the truth behind Mel’s disappearance.
At the same time as Dorothy is looking into Jim’s past and the mystery woman, Jenny is investigating the adultery case and Hannah is desperately searching for her missing friend life goes on. Both the family businesses are open bringing in new cases to investigate, like the elderly man who thinks that his carer is stealing from him and new funerals to plan and prepare. Edinburgh comes to life as a brooding backdrop to the unfolding story and the family home, the funeral parlour, the casket making, picking up the dead bodies, the embalming of the bodies, the dressing of the bodies, the burial and cremation services and all the behind the scenes details that go into preparing a funeral adds something really different and makes for an original concept and setting.
There is some stellar characterisation with the three Skelf women and depth to the emotions that they display. Each in their own way is strong and there is a resilience to them. They are flawed, they are family, they argue, bicker, disagree and fight but, they love each other, join forces, band together and are there for and help one another when needed. With each of the Skelf women being from a different generation, they see through different eyes, some younger, some older with experiences, life and time changing them and they all have a different perspective and way of looking at things. They deal with death on a daily basis, it is part of their everyday life but, it is the grief of others, not their own and there is a barrier. With the death of Jim that barrier is shattered and they have to deal with their own grief and the pain that consumes them. Jim’s death is an open wound, in time it will heal and it will leave a scar but, at the moment all they can do is carry on and try to cope the best that they can with the loss. During A Dark Matter, the Skelf women go through a torrent of emotions and Johnstone does a stellar job of transferring those emotions onto the page, investing you in and making you care about the trio of characters as they navigate cases, funerals, life, death, grief and try to solve the various mysteries that they have found themselves entwined in.
Johnstone has an engaging writing style that is easy-to-read and flows well. Being the first book in the series the story in A Dark Matter is a mix of both character-driven and story-driven. The foundations are set for the characters so that you are able to get a feel for the Skelf women, their personalities and who they are and, there is also more than enough story included to really sink your teeth into. The story is told through the three POV characters of Dorothy, Jenny and Hannah in short and snappy chapters that swap between the trio and that keep the story moving forward as it builds to its gripping and intense climax.
A Dark Matter is the first in an entertaining and dramatic family crime thriller series, more, please! It is compelling and darkly humorous with enough intrigue and suspense, secrets, lies and revelations to fill a grave.
As always this review can also be found on my blog The Tattooed Book Geek: https://thetattooedbookgeek.wordpress...
January 28, 2020
So, where to begin with A Dark Matter, as Doug Johnstone once again shows the complexity and diversity of his writing, making him one of the most accomplished writers in the crime genre at the moment. You genuinely never know where his writing is going to lead you, and always has the power to surprise…
I must confess to not knowing where to start with this one, as this is the book which has come closest to rivalling The Jump my favourite of Johnstone’s books to date. I think for my review I could easily just concentrate on the intuitive, realistic and pretty near flawless characterisation that Johnstone creates with this triumvirate of forthright and engaging dynasty of women. From matriarch, to daughter, to granddaughter, there is a real sense of the reader being utterly drawn into their world, coming to terms with the loss of their husband, father and grandfather Jim, and using their combined emotional strength and survival instincts to overcome grief, and emotional dislocation. It’s a rare thing indeed for a male author to so capture the real essence of what it is to be female, how we navigate life and relationships and the particular bonds that we form be it with those closest to us, and those that we encounter in other spheres of our lives.
I felt the characterisation was incredibly intuitive and truthful, and completely drew me into these women from the outset, reeling from grief, but with an innate sense of the will to do good, and to right wrongs. I liked the way that although for much of the book they are following their own paths, there was a real strength and spirit of understanding that arose as the story progressed as we see them navigating the stages of grief and abandonment, before a dawning realisation that their sum of the parts was an altogether more powerful thing indeed. By following this path with the characters, this a wonderfully structured and multi-layered narrative, as we pivot from one woman to the other and the varying strands of investigation they all embark on to keep both sides of the family business ticking over. I also enjoyed the way that Johnstone also puts them under an incredible amount of stress throughout, strengthening their ingenuity and forcing them into courses of action that only heighten their resilience and repairing the tears in their previous relationships with one another.
From the first unusual, but singularly life affirming scene, which so brilliantly undermines the solemnity and overblown ritual of traditional funereal rites, to Johnstone’s ingrained exploration of the inseparable relation of death to life the book addresses some weighty themes indeed. The author’s own background in science imbues the book with some interesting digressions into the world of science and one paragraph in particular regarding dark matter being the glue of the universe, also sparked in me the feeling that in this book there was a parallel feeling of love and family loyalty, particularly in the female characters, of being the glue that held them together, albeit with a few bumps and challenges along the way. Obviously, with the central location of the book, there is much about life and death to muse on along the way, and teamed with the diversions into science there is a real sense of continuity and circularity in Johnstone’s observations on mortality and our place in an endless universe which is fascinating.
As I mentioned in my introduction there is such a diversity in Johnstone’s writing that each book is like a present waiting to be unwrapped. The only consistent theme I can detect in his work is the love of Edinburgh, the good and the bad, and the attention to its landscape and environs is a constant presence in this book and others. He is a genuinely surprising writer, and I always look forward to what he will produce next, and what dark and twisting explorations of the human spirit he will take us on next. Highly recommended.
I must confess to not knowing where to start with this one, as this is the book which has come closest to rivalling The Jump my favourite of Johnstone’s books to date. I think for my review I could easily just concentrate on the intuitive, realistic and pretty near flawless characterisation that Johnstone creates with this triumvirate of forthright and engaging dynasty of women. From matriarch, to daughter, to granddaughter, there is a real sense of the reader being utterly drawn into their world, coming to terms with the loss of their husband, father and grandfather Jim, and using their combined emotional strength and survival instincts to overcome grief, and emotional dislocation. It’s a rare thing indeed for a male author to so capture the real essence of what it is to be female, how we navigate life and relationships and the particular bonds that we form be it with those closest to us, and those that we encounter in other spheres of our lives.
I felt the characterisation was incredibly intuitive and truthful, and completely drew me into these women from the outset, reeling from grief, but with an innate sense of the will to do good, and to right wrongs. I liked the way that although for much of the book they are following their own paths, there was a real strength and spirit of understanding that arose as the story progressed as we see them navigating the stages of grief and abandonment, before a dawning realisation that their sum of the parts was an altogether more powerful thing indeed. By following this path with the characters, this a wonderfully structured and multi-layered narrative, as we pivot from one woman to the other and the varying strands of investigation they all embark on to keep both sides of the family business ticking over. I also enjoyed the way that Johnstone also puts them under an incredible amount of stress throughout, strengthening their ingenuity and forcing them into courses of action that only heighten their resilience and repairing the tears in their previous relationships with one another.
From the first unusual, but singularly life affirming scene, which so brilliantly undermines the solemnity and overblown ritual of traditional funereal rites, to Johnstone’s ingrained exploration of the inseparable relation of death to life the book addresses some weighty themes indeed. The author’s own background in science imbues the book with some interesting digressions into the world of science and one paragraph in particular regarding dark matter being the glue of the universe, also sparked in me the feeling that in this book there was a parallel feeling of love and family loyalty, particularly in the female characters, of being the glue that held them together, albeit with a few bumps and challenges along the way. Obviously, with the central location of the book, there is much about life and death to muse on along the way, and teamed with the diversions into science there is a real sense of continuity and circularity in Johnstone’s observations on mortality and our place in an endless universe which is fascinating.
As I mentioned in my introduction there is such a diversity in Johnstone’s writing that each book is like a present waiting to be unwrapped. The only consistent theme I can detect in his work is the love of Edinburgh, the good and the bad, and the attention to its landscape and environs is a constant presence in this book and others. He is a genuinely surprising writer, and I always look forward to what he will produce next, and what dark and twisting explorations of the human spirit he will take us on next. Highly recommended.
December 13, 2019
I have been so excited about this latest offering by the author. An under takers as well as private investigators, what is not to love? The title couldn’t be anymore perfect for this brilliant read.
The story alternates in chapters between the three main characters, Dorothy the head of the family, Jenny her daughter and Hannah her granddaughter. I love how the author introduces us to these three generations of women. All quite different in character yet all appealing to the reader in their own way.
There is plenty going off within this story, more from the private investigator side of things. Not only is Hannah’s best friend missing, the investigating jobs come rolling in which has us see Jenny and Hannah especially, in action.
The funeral home side of things is very intriguing. I have to say how fascinating I found the parts to do with the home, how they dress the bodies for one. It’s a real eye opener that had me gripped yet raised the hairs on my arms. You can tell the author has done his research and it really shows.
A Dark Matter is a knock it out of the park start to a crime series featuring the Skelfs. I can not wait to be back with them again to see what else is in store for these three women as well as us readers. It has a little bit of everything going on that teased and delighted me throughout. This is proper top notch crime writing. Pure brilliance!
My Thanks to Anne cater and Orenda Books for a readers copy of this book. All opinions are my own and not biased in anyway.
The story alternates in chapters between the three main characters, Dorothy the head of the family, Jenny her daughter and Hannah her granddaughter. I love how the author introduces us to these three generations of women. All quite different in character yet all appealing to the reader in their own way.
There is plenty going off within this story, more from the private investigator side of things. Not only is Hannah’s best friend missing, the investigating jobs come rolling in which has us see Jenny and Hannah especially, in action.
The funeral home side of things is very intriguing. I have to say how fascinating I found the parts to do with the home, how they dress the bodies for one. It’s a real eye opener that had me gripped yet raised the hairs on my arms. You can tell the author has done his research and it really shows.
A Dark Matter is a knock it out of the park start to a crime series featuring the Skelfs. I can not wait to be back with them again to see what else is in store for these three women as well as us readers. It has a little bit of everything going on that teased and delighted me throughout. This is proper top notch crime writing. Pure brilliance!
My Thanks to Anne cater and Orenda Books for a readers copy of this book. All opinions are my own and not biased in anyway.
September 24, 2020
Private investigators, female leads, set in Scotland - this has everything I love in a book and yet it was just....meh. Starts with ludicrous scenario of family cremating the fathers body in their garden - and no-one notices! They also desecrate a couple of graves and no-one notices that either. The plots are paper thin and don't connect in anyway and none of the leads made any impression on me. Very, very disappointing.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 9, 2020
4.5/5 - rounding up for Goodreads!
The Skelfs are a well-known family in Edinburgh. They run a successful, long-established funeral home, as well as a private investigation service. When Jim, the patriarch of the Skelf family passes away, the family businesses are left to his wife, Dorothy, daughter, Jenny, and granddaughter, Hannah.
Hannah is ready to leap head on into both businesses, a decision that is accelerated after her roommate disappears. Jenny isn’t sure where she wants to find herself with her family trades, but left without a job and a place to live, she will need to take a chance on these changes. Dorothy has discovered a series of mysterious payments to an unknown account, which cause her to doubt who her husband was and the secrets he may have been keeping from her. Together these three strong-willed women are thrust into new arenas where they must find their footing, as well as learning to grieve for their loss and work together.
A DARK MATTER is a thrilling look into the everyday lives of the Skelf family. The three main characters of Dorothy, Jenny, and Hannah alternatively narrate their journey in creating new bonds and embracing new careers after the passing of beloved Jim. Prior to losing Jim, these women were not living and breathing the family businesses at their funeral home and private investigation service. The reader is treated with a front row seat as our main characters learn to find their roles within the businesses, while dealing with a revolving cast of characters and grief on multiple levels.
I was familiar with Doug Johnstone’s writing from FAULT LINES, which I had the pleasure of reading in 2018. What I’ve found over two books by Johnstone is that he is a craftsman in writing in a way which immediately draws readers into his stories. The characters are easily likeable, the setting is interesting, and the air of mystery is intriguing. I love finding out what Johnstone will come up with, as I’ve been consistently left guessing what the truth might be up until the grand reveal.
It’s hard for me to classify A DARK MATTER into one specific genre. On one hand it is certainly a work of crime fiction with a private investigation service being on of the Skelf family’s businesses, but there is much more below the surface. There is heart, emotion, and relatability within the pages of A DARK MATTER that is often not found in this genre. As an avid crime fiction reader I didn’t walk into this novel expecting quite the emotional punch I was greeted with. I found myself obsessively highlighting passages that rang true about life, while also enjoying being along the ride of the many cases touched upon by the Skelfs. This is easily one of those books that I would recommend to readers across vast genres, as there is a little bit of something for everything in this story.
I won’t share much more about the plot for this book, as I think it’s one best to head into blind or with limited knowledge. Let this one embrace you and take you for a ride!
If you do pick this one up, be sure to read the acknowledgements at the end to find out about Johnstone’s inspiration for his book!
Please be sure to check out all of the amazing bloggers heading up this tour!
A huge thank you to Orenda Books for providing me with a free copy of this book!
The Skelfs are a well-known family in Edinburgh. They run a successful, long-established funeral home, as well as a private investigation service. When Jim, the patriarch of the Skelf family passes away, the family businesses are left to his wife, Dorothy, daughter, Jenny, and granddaughter, Hannah.
Hannah is ready to leap head on into both businesses, a decision that is accelerated after her roommate disappears. Jenny isn’t sure where she wants to find herself with her family trades, but left without a job and a place to live, she will need to take a chance on these changes. Dorothy has discovered a series of mysterious payments to an unknown account, which cause her to doubt who her husband was and the secrets he may have been keeping from her. Together these three strong-willed women are thrust into new arenas where they must find their footing, as well as learning to grieve for their loss and work together.
A DARK MATTER is a thrilling look into the everyday lives of the Skelf family. The three main characters of Dorothy, Jenny, and Hannah alternatively narrate their journey in creating new bonds and embracing new careers after the passing of beloved Jim. Prior to losing Jim, these women were not living and breathing the family businesses at their funeral home and private investigation service. The reader is treated with a front row seat as our main characters learn to find their roles within the businesses, while dealing with a revolving cast of characters and grief on multiple levels.
I was familiar with Doug Johnstone’s writing from FAULT LINES, which I had the pleasure of reading in 2018. What I’ve found over two books by Johnstone is that he is a craftsman in writing in a way which immediately draws readers into his stories. The characters are easily likeable, the setting is interesting, and the air of mystery is intriguing. I love finding out what Johnstone will come up with, as I’ve been consistently left guessing what the truth might be up until the grand reveal.
It’s hard for me to classify A DARK MATTER into one specific genre. On one hand it is certainly a work of crime fiction with a private investigation service being on of the Skelf family’s businesses, but there is much more below the surface. There is heart, emotion, and relatability within the pages of A DARK MATTER that is often not found in this genre. As an avid crime fiction reader I didn’t walk into this novel expecting quite the emotional punch I was greeted with. I found myself obsessively highlighting passages that rang true about life, while also enjoying being along the ride of the many cases touched upon by the Skelfs. This is easily one of those books that I would recommend to readers across vast genres, as there is a little bit of something for everything in this story.
I won’t share much more about the plot for this book, as I think it’s one best to head into blind or with limited knowledge. Let this one embrace you and take you for a ride!
If you do pick this one up, be sure to read the acknowledgements at the end to find out about Johnstone’s inspiration for his book!
Please be sure to check out all of the amazing bloggers heading up this tour!
A huge thank you to Orenda Books for providing me with a free copy of this book!
January 24, 2020
Well this certainly ticked a lot of my boxes, strong women characters, death which I’ve always had a morbid curiosity with, dark humour and mystery solving. Then to top all that off the missing girl was called Mel. Although if I ever go missing just look in the nearest bookshop.
This book opened with an an absolute belter of a sentence and then didn’t let go. Three generations of Skelf women picking up the pieces and taking on both businesses after Jim dies. Having to speak to the grieving while dealing with their own grief.
Told from all three perspectives in alternate chapters and with multiple sub plots you would think this would lead to confusion. However all three women have very distinct and authentic voices and the skilful writing makes it read like a dream. You will have a favourite, probably depending on which generation you feel closest too. Dorothy was mine, determined to find the truth, past misdemeanours (nobody’s perfect) and not afraid to get her hands dirty.
I also had another favourite character Schrodinger the cat who made regular appearances much to my complete and utter joy.
This wasn’t a one sitting book it was more a book to savour and get involved in. It manages to mix both family saga alongside mystery thriller with ease and be both plot and character driven, no mean feat I assure you.
It also takes a certain element of madness to mix a funeral business with a PI business and I often wonder what goes through an author’s head but what a great idea. Mystery and death do often go hand in hand after all.
This book opened with an an absolute belter of a sentence and then didn’t let go. Three generations of Skelf women picking up the pieces and taking on both businesses after Jim dies. Having to speak to the grieving while dealing with their own grief.
Told from all three perspectives in alternate chapters and with multiple sub plots you would think this would lead to confusion. However all three women have very distinct and authentic voices and the skilful writing makes it read like a dream. You will have a favourite, probably depending on which generation you feel closest too. Dorothy was mine, determined to find the truth, past misdemeanours (nobody’s perfect) and not afraid to get her hands dirty.
I also had another favourite character Schrodinger the cat who made regular appearances much to my complete and utter joy.
This wasn’t a one sitting book it was more a book to savour and get involved in. It manages to mix both family saga alongside mystery thriller with ease and be both plot and character driven, no mean feat I assure you.
It also takes a certain element of madness to mix a funeral business with a PI business and I often wonder what goes through an author’s head but what a great idea. Mystery and death do often go hand in hand after all.
September 17, 2021
I had hopes for this book. Anything set in Edinburgh is already interesting, but by the halfway point I could suspend disbelief no longer. I didn't like any of the women. The friendly cop who happily hands over police information, runs sneaky DNA tests* and intervenes in arrests that have nothing to do with him just was too implausible. And the extremely heavy-handed insertion of gender politics (coming from a fifty-something white bloke) is a shrill attempt at wokeness.
* for which the results came through so quickly. Normally in police procedurals the investigators are hampered by the delay in getting results back from the lab!
* for which the results came through so quickly. Normally in police procedurals the investigators are hampered by the delay in getting results back from the lab!
March 18, 2022
Als Bestattungsunternehmer Jim Skelf mit etwa siebzig Jahren plözlich verstirbt, hinterlässt er drei Frauen, die sich fortan ums Familienunternehmen, zu dem auch eine Detektei gehört, kümmern müssen: Seine Frau Dorothy, seine Tochter Jenny und Enkelin Hannah. In der Folgezeit begleiten wir Dorothy, Jenny und Hannah abwechselnd durch Perspektivwechsel bei ihren Ermittlungen. Dorothy spürt Geheimnissen ihres toten Mannes nach, Jenny einem neuen Fall von vermeintlichem Ehebruch, und Hannah will ihre spurlos verschwundene Mitbewohnerin finden.
„Eingeäschert“ ist der Auftakt zu einer Reihe um die drei Damen vom Bestattungsinstitut. Ein gelungener Kriminalroman um familiäre Bande, das Leben und den Tod und über toxische Beziehungen mit einem ungewöhnlichen weiblichen Ermittlertrio.
„Eingeäschert“ ist der Auftakt zu einer Reihe um die drei Damen vom Bestattungsinstitut. Ein gelungener Kriminalroman um familiäre Bande, das Leben und den Tod und über toxische Beziehungen mit einem ungewöhnlichen weiblichen Ermittlertrio.
June 8, 2020
Loved this darkly comic thriller with strong female characters from three generations of the Skelf family. Dorothy has just lost her husband who ran the family funeral parlour and worked as a private investigator. She and her daughter Jenny take over the business aided by her Granddaughter, Hannah. Hannah is a physics student and I enjoyed the touch of physics here and there!
Looking forward to the next one
Looking forward to the next one
August 20, 2020
The blurb says it all: "... a darkly funny and warm portrait of a family in turmoil". I thoroughly enjoyed the story, while zapping the passages of introspection (-1 star), and loved the 3 generations of strong female characters. What an original setting: a funeral parlour that doubles as a private investigation service!
January 30, 2020
I'm grateful to Orenda Books for letting me have a free advance e-copy of A Dark Matter.
I loved this book for a number of reasons, not all of which may generalise. First, and this is all me for,
Edinburgh!
KB!
JCMB!
To explain the jargon, I studied physics at Edinburgh (no introduction to the city needed I hope) University from 1986 to 1993 (BSc and PhD, I could think once upon a time) and for most of that period I worked at King's Buildings (KB) and was based in the James Clerk Maxwell Building (JCMB).
So those names, and the locations in this book, predominantly on the Southside of the city, brought back a lot of happy (and a few other) memories. Seeing Jenny, and Hannah, walk not only streets but corridors I knew, was a bittersweet experience. So far as I can tell, Johnstone's research is spot on, up to and including the jumbled layout of the buildings at KB - basically, every time they needed a new one they just banged it down in any gap they could find - the cramming of four postgrads into a small office, and the reputation of Negotiants.
But I'm not here to reminisce, and this book isn't actually set in the 80s, it's set now. My other reasons for loving it will though I hope map across to many of you - it is both a superb mystery, and a haunting and touching examination of grief and bereavement. Plus is has a great sense of place, of people going about their lives in one of those early Autumn warm spells that a generally chilly city favours its residents with occasionally. Of course that contrasts with the sense of bereavement, of loss - how can it all just go on? Why isn't everyone cast down, weeping, struck silent?
A Dark Matter is about three generations of Skelf women (and happily it's the first of a series so we'll be hearing more about them). Skelf's is an Edinburgh undertaker with a sideline in private detecting, but Jim, husband, father, and grandfather (to Dorothy, Jenny and Hannah respectively) has died. So it is his funeral we witness (we meet him first as he is cremated in the open air in the family garden, atoms mingling with those of the world around). It's his life that ends up investigated. But first, each of the women gathered in that garden has challenges in the days and weeks that follow. Dorothy as well as keenly, so keenly, missing her husband, begins to suspect that he was keeping something from her. ('Left behind to find out all the nasty secrets...') Should she look into this? Does she want to find the answer? Must she prevent someone else from doing so?
What does it mean to cease to trust someone who's dead, and how can that trust be restored?
Jenny, divorced some years before but now penniless and forced to move back into the family home and business, also has trust issues, in fact even more so. Her mother Dorothy almost abandoned the family once, and then her husband Craig did abandon her for Fiona. Now her mother reveals a friendship with policeman Thomas, and also raises doubts about her father. Jenny feels fragile, struggling with issues of her own worth and also drinking a lot. In many respects perhaps the most vulnerable of the three, feeling short on affection and likely to be taken advantage of
Hannah - well, Hannah's studying physics and has her head full of quantum field theory (a bit of a stretch, I thought, at undergraduate level?) as well as of her girlfriend Indy but is also missing her grandfather and worrying about her mum and Dorothy.
Then her friend and flatmate Mel vanishes, and no-one else will take it seriously...
Johnstone throws other mysteries at us as well of those of Jim and of Mel. There's the elderly man who thinks his carer is stealing from him.
Simon, the employee of Skelf's who vanished years before but whose Imogen has been paid, regularly, ever since.
The civil servant whose wife wants him followed, convinced he's having an affair.
As the three women set out to investigate all of these different puzzles, there's a sense that even they don't know if they are trying to push away the grief, the loss, or to find answers that will help to resolve it ('Maybe life is just a succession of diversion tactics'). But these aren't just cosy puzzles. Real lives are involved, as Jenny finds when she follows her target to a backstreet warehouse in Leith, or as Dorothy discovers when she confronts an angry mother while her daughter plays in the next room. As the stakes become higher and the tension - the grief and uncertainty - grow - all three begin to behave in scary ways, doing things that may expose them to danger or at the least damage lives and reputations. It's the kind of book where at times you find yourself holding your breath, almost afraid of what you may find on the next page.
In a way this book is very much an introduction to Dorothy, Jenny and Hannah who, as members of three different generations, have their own attitudes, prejudices and memories. We see Edinburgh through all their eyes, in different layers as for example Jenny ventures into Mel's student life and compares it with her own or as Dorothy (who teaches drums) encounters a young and confident teenage girl. In a way the three are exploring different timeslices of the same city, their past interactions with it forming the present in a very... quantum field theory kind of way! Each, at a different time, stands in the others' shoes, as it were, considering alternatives that never came to be (what of Dorothy had left her family? What if Jenny hadn't got divorced?)
At the same time the novel also explores the present, especially the patriarchal attitudes of so many of the men, highlighted by the experiences of both Hannah and Jenny which show how little attitudes have apparently changed ('Here two well-educated young guys acting like cavemen...') between the 80s and the present day.
There is, as I have said, a nice sense here of Edinburgh as a place (you can almost feel it breathe). There is also a fascinating look into a trade many of us are I thing fascinated by but perhaps almost don't want to know about - the funeral business. We see how corpses are prepared for burial or cremation, and how those in the trade perceive members of the public ('They either presumed you were morbid of they had their own creepy questions')
Above all and appropriately for a book that is set among the trapping of death and which focusses on the processes of dying and on what happens after, this book has a great sense of life. Not only the heartbeat of a great city and its people but the instinct to live away death ('she was twenty years old and had her whole life ahead of her and she was kissing a boy... and she had nothing to worry about, not a care in the world...') The book may I think show that this instinct must be directed, managed, in case it, too, becomes merely a distraction. But - and again in an allusion to physics - the several times repeated comment that 'we are our processes not our results' does suggest that it is a good instinct, that risk taking doesn't just merit rewards but is necessary for those good things - life and love and peace. All of the women here take risks, you will have to decide at the end of the book whether the process justifies them or not.
Oh, and there's a cat called Schrödinger...
I loved this book for a number of reasons, not all of which may generalise. First, and this is all me for,
Edinburgh!
KB!
JCMB!
To explain the jargon, I studied physics at Edinburgh (no introduction to the city needed I hope) University from 1986 to 1993 (BSc and PhD, I could think once upon a time) and for most of that period I worked at King's Buildings (KB) and was based in the James Clerk Maxwell Building (JCMB).
So those names, and the locations in this book, predominantly on the Southside of the city, brought back a lot of happy (and a few other) memories. Seeing Jenny, and Hannah, walk not only streets but corridors I knew, was a bittersweet experience. So far as I can tell, Johnstone's research is spot on, up to and including the jumbled layout of the buildings at KB - basically, every time they needed a new one they just banged it down in any gap they could find - the cramming of four postgrads into a small office, and the reputation of Negotiants.
But I'm not here to reminisce, and this book isn't actually set in the 80s, it's set now. My other reasons for loving it will though I hope map across to many of you - it is both a superb mystery, and a haunting and touching examination of grief and bereavement. Plus is has a great sense of place, of people going about their lives in one of those early Autumn warm spells that a generally chilly city favours its residents with occasionally. Of course that contrasts with the sense of bereavement, of loss - how can it all just go on? Why isn't everyone cast down, weeping, struck silent?
A Dark Matter is about three generations of Skelf women (and happily it's the first of a series so we'll be hearing more about them). Skelf's is an Edinburgh undertaker with a sideline in private detecting, but Jim, husband, father, and grandfather (to Dorothy, Jenny and Hannah respectively) has died. So it is his funeral we witness (we meet him first as he is cremated in the open air in the family garden, atoms mingling with those of the world around). It's his life that ends up investigated. But first, each of the women gathered in that garden has challenges in the days and weeks that follow. Dorothy as well as keenly, so keenly, missing her husband, begins to suspect that he was keeping something from her. ('Left behind to find out all the nasty secrets...') Should she look into this? Does she want to find the answer? Must she prevent someone else from doing so?
What does it mean to cease to trust someone who's dead, and how can that trust be restored?
Jenny, divorced some years before but now penniless and forced to move back into the family home and business, also has trust issues, in fact even more so. Her mother Dorothy almost abandoned the family once, and then her husband Craig did abandon her for Fiona. Now her mother reveals a friendship with policeman Thomas, and also raises doubts about her father. Jenny feels fragile, struggling with issues of her own worth and also drinking a lot. In many respects perhaps the most vulnerable of the three, feeling short on affection and likely to be taken advantage of
Hannah - well, Hannah's studying physics and has her head full of quantum field theory (a bit of a stretch, I thought, at undergraduate level?) as well as of her girlfriend Indy but is also missing her grandfather and worrying about her mum and Dorothy.
Then her friend and flatmate Mel vanishes, and no-one else will take it seriously...
Johnstone throws other mysteries at us as well of those of Jim and of Mel. There's the elderly man who thinks his carer is stealing from him.
Simon, the employee of Skelf's who vanished years before but whose Imogen has been paid, regularly, ever since.
The civil servant whose wife wants him followed, convinced he's having an affair.
As the three women set out to investigate all of these different puzzles, there's a sense that even they don't know if they are trying to push away the grief, the loss, or to find answers that will help to resolve it ('Maybe life is just a succession of diversion tactics'). But these aren't just cosy puzzles. Real lives are involved, as Jenny finds when she follows her target to a backstreet warehouse in Leith, or as Dorothy discovers when she confronts an angry mother while her daughter plays in the next room. As the stakes become higher and the tension - the grief and uncertainty - grow - all three begin to behave in scary ways, doing things that may expose them to danger or at the least damage lives and reputations. It's the kind of book where at times you find yourself holding your breath, almost afraid of what you may find on the next page.
In a way this book is very much an introduction to Dorothy, Jenny and Hannah who, as members of three different generations, have their own attitudes, prejudices and memories. We see Edinburgh through all their eyes, in different layers as for example Jenny ventures into Mel's student life and compares it with her own or as Dorothy (who teaches drums) encounters a young and confident teenage girl. In a way the three are exploring different timeslices of the same city, their past interactions with it forming the present in a very... quantum field theory kind of way! Each, at a different time, stands in the others' shoes, as it were, considering alternatives that never came to be (what of Dorothy had left her family? What if Jenny hadn't got divorced?)
At the same time the novel also explores the present, especially the patriarchal attitudes of so many of the men, highlighted by the experiences of both Hannah and Jenny which show how little attitudes have apparently changed ('Here two well-educated young guys acting like cavemen...') between the 80s and the present day.
There is, as I have said, a nice sense here of Edinburgh as a place (you can almost feel it breathe). There is also a fascinating look into a trade many of us are I thing fascinated by but perhaps almost don't want to know about - the funeral business. We see how corpses are prepared for burial or cremation, and how those in the trade perceive members of the public ('They either presumed you were morbid of they had their own creepy questions')
Above all and appropriately for a book that is set among the trapping of death and which focusses on the processes of dying and on what happens after, this book has a great sense of life. Not only the heartbeat of a great city and its people but the instinct to live away death ('she was twenty years old and had her whole life ahead of her and she was kissing a boy... and she had nothing to worry about, not a care in the world...') The book may I think show that this instinct must be directed, managed, in case it, too, becomes merely a distraction. But - and again in an allusion to physics - the several times repeated comment that 'we are our processes not our results' does suggest that it is a good instinct, that risk taking doesn't just merit rewards but is necessary for those good things - life and love and peace. All of the women here take risks, you will have to decide at the end of the book whether the process justifies them or not.
Oh, and there's a cat called Schrödinger...
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