Book review: The Blood Is Still, by Douglas Skelton

I was only a few pages into this new novel before I decided on the phrase I would use to describe it. It’s is a corking read. It is not a term I use lightly, or indeed often, but it really does describe the pace, excitement and deft characterisation of this second outing for Rebecca Connolly, a young newspaper journalist based in Inverness. Douglas Skelton’s narrative follows her work to discover the truth about a murder case after a body is found on the Culloden battlefield, apparently the victim of a bizarre ritualistic killing, with a claymore through the chest.


Douglas Skelton

Rebecca is at loggerheads with the new style of journalism where the corporate bosses of her paper discourage any real investigative work, such as visiting crime scenes and interviewing witnesses.
One of her first unauthorised calls is to a local crime family, the Burkes, de facto leaders of the Inchferry estate. The mother, Mo, is a self-appointed community leader who rules her two sons with a rod of iron. Scott Burke is a coke-addled psychopath, while his brother, Nolan, is a more complicated character.


Guardian-reading and thoughtful, Nolan is also described by Rebecca’s friend as “a bit of a studmuffin” and after the meeting he embarks on a gentlemanly pursuit of our heroine.


The fledgling relationship is sensitively written and believable and creates a romantic thread with a dangerous undertone.


Perhaps Skelton’s greatest character creation, however, is Finbar Dalgliesh, the head of Spioraid nan Gaidheal, an right-wing political movement pushing independence, racism and homophobia and promoting discord wherever possible. Dalgliesh has his roots in many public figures – I suspect that who you think he resembles will depend on your own political point of view. 


When a paedophile is set to be rehoused on the estate, Dalgliesh’s oily but charismatic speeches whip up the hitherto peacefully protesting crowds into an anti-establishment frenzy. Rebecca understands that: “He was tapping into rage that went beyond this issue. He was kindling years, maybe decades of prejudice and social inequality, making the people believe that they were mere fodder for a political elite who cared little for the ordinary Scot.”


It is all rousing stuff, and taps into the modern malaise of mob rule, political manipulation and fake news.


Skelton also has a fine line in dark humour. When describing a rundown pub where Rebecca finally agrees to a drink with Nolan, he writes: “There was something depressing about the place, as if it and its customers had nowhere else to go.

Here dying dreams were mourned in hard wooden chairs at scarred tables and any hope for the future saw the last rites delivered at the bottom of a whisky glass.” 


The Blood Is Still isn’t a complicated psychological drama, nor does it manipulate the reader with constant twists and reveals. Skelton’s talent is casting his descriptive eyes on the familiar and rendering truthful characters with a believable backstory. I hadn’t read the first Rebecca Connolly novel but I didn’t need to to thoroughly enjoy this one. I will go back and read it now, and look forward to more in the series. 



The Blood Is Still, by Douglas Skelton, Polygon, £8.99