Scotland, 1375: Muirteach MacPhee and his wife Mariota visit Edinburgh Castle, assisting the Lord of the Isles in his negotiations with King Robert II. A trading vessel arrives at the nearby port of Leith from the far away Norse settlement in Greenland. The ship brings unexpected diversion and carries coveted wares: gyrfalcons, unicorn’s horns, and fine furs. Both King Robert and the Lord of the Isles desire the rare birds, easily worth a king’s ransom.
Muirteach and Mariota, unaccustomed to the sophistication of castle life, initially find pleasure in the heady and flirtatious glamor of the royal court. Then sudden and unexpected cruelty, followed by the senseless death of a beautiful young girl, plunge the couple into a murky sea of alliances and intrigue that stretches from Scotland across the icy western ocean to the far northern lands of the Norse, leaving trails of treachery and murder in its wake.
Susan in Hvritamannaland, or Down the Research Rabbit-hole
by Susan McDuffie
Research Rapture: A state of enthusiasm or exaltation arising from the exhaustive study of a topic or period of history; the delightful but dangerous condition of becoming repeatedly sidetracked in following intriguing threads of information, or constantly searching for one more elusive fact. ~Sean Pidgeon
When I first read this quote, from Sean Pidgeon’s essay in the New York Times (January 5, 2013) I felt I had found a name for the condition that has afflicted my writing life. I love research, and unfortunately find it a wonderful way to procrastinate. This might stem from my dad, Bruce McDuffie, an analytical chemist with a studious bent, or from his uncle, Allen McDuffie, who was the original Scottish nerd in my family and started the Clan MacDuffie/MacFie Society in the US sometime in the 1960s. I still have a few of Uncle Allen’s research books—SCOTS HERALDRY, THE CELTIC CHURCHES, and others-- with his handwritten notes, his handwriting so similar to my dad’s, in the margins. The stories I heard from the two of them about the MacDuffie clan’s role as Keeper of the Records for the Lords of the Isles were my original inspiration for the Muirteach MacPhee mysteries, the first of which was A MASS FOR THE DEAD.Still, for each book I write I find I have to have some extra little nugget of history, or sometimes what I like to call ”faux-history” (you can include alien abduction and the Oak Island Mystery in this category), that sparks each book. For THE FAERIE HILLS, the second in this series, it was fairy changeling lore, along with the Bridget Cleary murder in late 19th century Ireland. If women were being murdered because they were suspected of being “taken” by the fairies in 1895, then what had been the mindset five hundred years before that, in 1373, when belief in the “good people” was presumably even stronger? THE WATERGATE of course references legends of the kelpies, while my interest in the Voynich manuscript inspired THE STUDY OF MURDER. (All these awesome covers designed by our own Jenny Q!)
