The Great Silence by Doug Johnstone

This is the third instalment in Doug Johnstone’s series about the Skelf family – three generations of Edinburgh women who run a funeral business alongside a private investigations bureau. They have different doors for the clients of the two companies, but both lead to the same reception and the activities of both sides of the business are entwined in the plot.

Matriarch Dorothy is newly widowed, but embarking on a new relationship with a police officer,

Thomas, at the same time as taking in a teenage lodger, Abi, who is estranged from her family. Dorothy’s daughter Jenny has escaped an abusive relationship which culminated in her kidnap, but her ex-husband has eluded justice and is still on the run. Grand-daughter Hannah, meanwhile, is about to embark on a PhD in astrophysics and is happily paired up with girlfriend Indy, and both of them work on investigations.

The action all takes place in the present day, but while there is a discussion about the Tiger King documentary, there is no mention of Covid. Life carries on as normal – if you can describe the dizzying rate at which cases, crises and questions are thrown up by the plot as normal.

The story rattles along at a decent pace and there are various surprises in store, often involving frightening levels of threat and violence.

There are minor flaws, including an odd moment when one character expresses surprise at seeing another after an absence of many years when in fact he had seen him only the day before. The power of this book, though, lies in the warm personalities and dark humour of the Skelfs, and by the end readers will be just as interested in their relationships with each other as the mysteries they are trying to solve.