“Crackling with energy, assured and authoritative.”
So says Val McDermid about Manda Scott’s debut suspense novel, Hen’s Teeth, the first novel to feature Dr Kellen Stewart.
But she might well have been discussing Kellen herself.
Indeed, she is the draw to the series, in this reader’s opinion; it’s Kellen’s sharp and evaluative manner that brings the energy to the story, that crackling energy.
Kellen is now a practicing therapist in Glasgow, but once she studied to be a medical doctor. Not in anatomy though, not like her friend, Lee.
Lee Adams is introduced to the reader along with Glasgow, at the Man on Byres Road, where they serve a mean vegetarian haggis at its rough-pine tables.
“Lee is not crazy, whatever Caroline Leader might think.”
It’s always promising to have someone introduced as “not crazy”, and certainly Lee is as compelling a character as Kellen herself, though she is not at the heart of the narrative.
And, in this story, organs matter. In autopsies, in particular. (Which Lee, not Kellen, will conduct.)
Kellen could not stomach the anatomy program, literally.
“If you can make the long walk up to the lecture theatre on the top floor without reviewing breakfast en route, then there’s a fair chance of surviving the real-life equivalents in the surgical theatre. Everyone else had better stick to medicine.”
But she is forced to return to that staircase, with all its horrors behind glass en route, during the course of solving the crime in Hen’s Teeth.
But that’s easier said than done — that solving — easier wished for than accomplished.
Kellen is a therapist, not a sleuth, and even though it’s readily apparent that she and Lee have gotten into their share of trouble in the past, even though they both possession great gumption, the situation gets much worse than anyone is expecting.
“Small spasms of paranoia vied with simple disbelief and an overwhelming urge to return to the normality of everyday life.”
That’s understandable, and one of the elements of this novel that contributes to its success, the sense that the reader can imagine what everyday life would have been at the farm where Caroline and Bridget lived (where Bridget and Kellen used to live together).
The farm, with its sprawling lands and horses, brings Glasgow off the page.
When MacDonald brings a young sheepdog out to the property, Caroline is keen to offer her a home there, all the more so when she realizes that the dog’s name is T’îr.
“Tîr na’n Og. The Land of Youth. It’s what Bridget used to call the old grave mound with the cairn in the beech wood…Tan’s favourite place. We have to take her, Kellen. It’s perfect.”
The sense of an enduring, haunting, magical land both contributes to a sense of uneasiness and a sense of security, simultaneously.
“The cairn still stands at the end of the grave mound: a conical beehive reaching up to my shoulder, with a crust of ancient moss and flat, spreading lichen so thick that the stones could crumble and the shape would stay.”
The sense of place is strong, but established in a straight-forward, no-nonsense manner, which suits Kellen and Lee.
“I undressed messily, draping my clothes, unfolded, over the chair by the bed, and crawled under the primrose printed duvet. Slipping a hand under the pillow, I wrapped my fingers round the vial of blood that had come back with me from the cairn.
It didn’t stop the nightmares but it added an interesting edge.”
Ultimately this mystery is rooted in relationships, in every way, be those relationships with the land or between people or between four-leggeds and two-leggeds, between furred, skinned and feathered.
It’s a story that simmers along with a sense of urgency, against a backdrop of rural life so rich that you can almost smell it, and manages to explore conflicts of all sorts: the delicate power struggles between the sexes, between partners, between local/regional authorities, between corporate/public interests, between rural/urban lifestyles, between cats and dogs who all want the warmest spot around the Rayburn.
It was short-listed for the Orange Prize in 1997; I bought my copy when it was first published in Canada, in 2000, paying close to a hard-cover price for a little mass-market pocketbook. And then waited more than ten years to read it. That’s “not crazy” either.
Have you read any of Manda Scott’s books?
Thanks for the comments. I haven’t read the historical novels, but I have picked them up many times, and I even bought the first one as a gift once! (Should have kept it obviously!) Can’t think of anything that I found overly coincidental, but I loved the animals…one of my favourite parts (but that’s just me). It was silliness to have waited so long: I’m sure I’ve read a thousand library books in that time. *shakes head at self* Hopefully when I start adding to my Manda Scott collection, I’ve learned something from all this, and I’ll be reading as I go, not letting them linger on the shelf!
Short listed for the Orange? Funny how we tend to miss out on back years’ nominees. I shall have to read this.
P.S. Paying full=price, waiting 10 years? Not crazy at all. 😉
I enjoyed this book, but I found the coincidences a bit much. The scene with the dogs was especially eye-rolling. It was compelling though and I plan to try more of her books at some point.
Don’t worry I also buy books and then somehow manage to avoid reading them for years!
I haven’t read any books by this author, but you’ve got my interest very piqued with this one. It sounds like something that I would enjoy, and I am glad that you had such a great time with it too!
I read the first three books in Scott’s Boudica series and really enjoyed them. But they became progressively odder in terms of using dreams to tell the future, etc., and I had trouble believing that Boudica and her people fought the Romans using dreams to that extent. But I could be very wrong! She also had Boudica and Caradoc as lovers, which I think was unlikely. But the writing was really great, and I enjoyed learning more about pre-Roman Britain!
Have not read any book by Manda. But it was great reading your thoughts on this one.