The Malt Whisky Murders, by Natalie Jayne Clark review: 'an entertaining caper'

In the new novel from Natalie Jayne Clark, a couple who have just purchased a whisky distillery in Campbeltown get a nasty shock when they open some old barrels. Review by Allan Massie

Whisky and Murder go together, in Scottish crime fiction anyway. Here they do so quite light-heartedly. One of the quotes on the back cover calls this book "Hilarious, brave and original." Others might call it a caper. That's to say: it is entertaining, but seems to have little connection with reality. Of course, that's true of much crime fiction here in Scotland, where we have just been told that the homicide rate is the lowest for more that 20 years - a fact not really reflected on the shelves of our bookshops.

Whisky has of course gone up in the world - single malts that is. They were rare when I was young, rarely seen in a pub. In middle-class households, the whisky bottle - Johnny Walker Red Label, Famous Grouse or Vat67 - sat next to a soda syphon. In public bars there would be a jug of water and a bottle of lemonade on the counter. Farmers and manual workers often topped up their dram with the lemonade free of charge.

Times have changed. Eilidh is a young woman who, from her early years, has made herself a malt whisky expert, starting off with a blog and then branching out. Now, with her wife Morag, formerly a distinguished Scotsman journalist, she has bought a distillery in Campbelltown. This should ring alarm bells with the reader; we know from the work of the late lamented Denzel Meyrick that the Mull of Kintyre has a murder rate to rival Chicago in Prohibition days.

The distillery is derelict, and much clearing-up and renovation needs to be done before TV crews can be invited in to promote the new venture. This, it transpires, will take longer than hoped: long-dead, fully-clothed corpses are soon discovered in two of the barrels which came with the sale.

Sign up to our FREE Arts & Culture newsletter at www.scotsman.com/newsletter

Now most of us, I suppose, if we discovered we had bought two corpses along with a distillery, would call the police. But not Eilidh, even though the bodies in the barrels have been there about as long as she has lived. Morag, being a former journalist, has her doubts about remaining silent and carrying on with the renovations, but she nevertheless agrees with her wife. So, Eilidh gets on with the work and with winning the support of the local community. She is good at this. She is pretty good at most things, and headstrong too.

Parts of the novel are told in another voice. This belongs to a character we know only as "You". This person worked in the distillery long ago when it was already in decline, sales falling, if slowly. “You” insisted they must change their image - suggested innovative advertising was needed to attract new customers, that it was no good just appealing to old buffers, that you can't win a new market with images of of tweedy old boys sitting in the heather with a Labrador at their feat. But "You” was rebuffed, and went away promoting and selling other brands all overt the world.

Now, however, "You" is back in Campbelltown. Does "You" have anything to do with the dead men? And who are they anyway? I couldn't possibly comment.

The Malt Whisky Murders is an entertaining novel, feather-light, flowing along at a good pace. The main characters are likable and Eilidh and Morag have a fine dog, always welcome in a novel. It is brisk and frothy and you will also quite probably learn something about whisky. It would of course have been different if they had called the police, but this doesn't really matter.

The Malt Whisky Murders, by Natalie Jayne Clark, Polygon, £9.99

READ MORE: Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia by Sam Dalrymple review: 'alert to the details'