The Second Strain

The Laird and the Law are brought together again! Involved in plans to establish the Borders town of Kilstane as a music festival centre, Sir Nicholas Torrance faces problems when a corpse is found in the main concert venue. Sent to his aid is Detective Inspector Lesley Gunn, who is still emotionally bruised from their last encounter. She becomes enmeshed not just in a murder investigation but in musical puzzles taxing all her powers of deduction. An eccentric composer dominates the proceedings, but investigation shows that he himself is dominated by the ghost of an old rival. But just when Lesley Gunn is tangling with bewildering patterns of musical guesswork, another murder throws even more discord into the festival. John Burke presents an entertaining puzzle and the tantalizing question of whether the laird and the sleuth will at last come together, or whether a tempestuous woman violinist will wreck things for them and others.