Tag Archives: Shirley McKay

Friend and Foe by Shirley McKay – 20 Books of Summer 2023

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Friend and Foe by Shirley McKay is the fourth book in the author’s Hew Cullan mystery series. The setting is St Andrews in 1583. At the back of this book there is a glossary of Scots words used by the author which I imagine will be useful to some readers, I must admit there were a few that even I didn’t know, but I think they’re always easy to take a guess at from the context.

It’s over three weeks since I read this book and so much has happened in the time since I finished it that some of the details of the mystery are a bit of a blur to me, but I did really enjoy it.

Hew’s sister Meg isn’t really happy in her new home in St Andrews, but her physician husband Giles works at the university and must live within the town. Meg misses her old home which is just a few miles outside the town, but she had a garden there where she grew the herbs she needed to make her lotions and potions. Giles is worried about her and has begun to extend their home so that Meg will have a place of her own where she can continue with her own herbalism.  But they find themselves in trouble when it looks to others that their renovations have an ulterior motive.

Hew has made more enemies and things are just too hot for him in Scotland, it looks like he’ll be leaving home for his own safety, but will he be jumping from the frying pan into the fire?  It looks like the next book in this series will find Hew in England again.

 

Time and Tide by Shirley McKay

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Time and Tide by Shirley McKay was published in 2011 and it’s the third book in the author’s Hew Cullan series.

The setting is St Andrews 1582 and a ship has been wrecked just off the town. There’s only one survivor, all the others have succumbed to some sort of illness. The locals are worried that it might have been some sort of infectious disease, but there’s a windmill on  the wreck and various inhabitants of the town want it for themselves.  But who does it belong to?

Hew is given the job of sailing to Ghent to find the owner and to tell them what has happened to all of the sailors, while Hew’s brother-in-law tries to establish what the sailors died from.  Hew’s task is all the more dangerous as the Low Countries are at war with Spain, but he’s glad to get out of St Andrews and to be travelling again and he soon falls in with a Scottish mercenary who will help him with his investigations in Antwerp and Vlissingen –  or not.

There’s a lot going on in this book, murders, rumours of witchcraft and Hew meets royalty,  I really liked it although my thoughts on it are hardly rivetting reading, but I’m looking forward to reading the next one in this series.

 

Fate and Fortune by Shirley McKay

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Fate and Fortune by Shirley McKay is the second book in her Hew Cullan murder mystery series.

The book begins in the year 1581 in St Andrews and the young Scottish lawyer Hew Cullan has arrived there too late, his father is already dead. Hew is now the owner of the family home, his father had also left a manuscript which Hew is to have published. Edinburgh is calling Hew and indeed unknown to him he has been apprenticed to Richard Cunningham, a well known advocate, but Hew isn’t keen on continuing his career in law. However, when a young fisherwoman is found dead on the beach, with obvious signs of having been raped, Hew is appalled by the attitude of those who should be seeking the culprit. The death of the young girl was apparently of no interest to them, she was of no importance. Hew thinks differently.

But Edinburgh beckons and after a long and eventful journey astride his ‘characterful’ horse Dun Scottis, along the coast to catch a ferry to Edinburgh Hew finds himself in desperate peril. For the first time in his life he realises that he has always been sheltered by the clothes that he wears as his life falls apart when he has to wear the old clothes of a fisherman and he no longer has the automatic respect of those in any kind of authority.

Eventually Hew manages to make his way to the publisher that his father wanted to publish his book. It is run by a young widow determined to keep the business going,

I enjoyed this one even more than the first book in this series – Hue and Cry – so I’m looking forward to reading the next one soonish.

Hue and Cry by Shirley McKay

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Hue and Cry cover

Hue and Cry by Shirley McKay is the first book in the author’s Hew Cullan series. It’s a murder mystery with a 16th century Scottish setting.

It begins in St Andrews in 1579. The town’s cathedral has long been wrecked by the religious reformers and many of the town’s newer buildings have been built using the robbed stone from it.

Hew Cullan has just returned home after studying law in Paris, he’s keen to catch up with some of his old friends before travelling on to his father’s house. But he gets caught up in a search for a young boy who has disappeared from his father’s shop. It’s thought that his father has probably beaten the young lad for some mistake he had made, but things take an ominous turn when his body is found.

Hew’s old friend Nicholas had been tutoring the victim as the father was hoping to get his son into the university, and suspicion falls on Nicholas. There’s been gossip about Nicholas and as we know, mud sticks, especially in the atmosphere of strict Scottish Presbyterianism. Hew has been shocked by the corruption at the university and also within the law courts, with nobody seeming to care if the actual culprit has been found, or just a handy fall-guy.

This makes it all sound quite grim but there’s a lot more to it of course. Hew is a great character, as is his sister Meg and there’s even some humour with Hew buying a ‘characterful’ horse. The very young King James VI makes an appearance and given the date and location witches are mentioned.

I was however perplexed by mention of ‘a bishop’ on page 257 as the religious upheaval of the Scottish Reformation was to get rid of bishops – which they did.

Otherwise this was a very enjoyable read, enhanced for me because all of the locations are very familiar to me. I think that it would have been a good idea to have a map of St Andrews and environs, as Hew does a lot of stravaiging around the streets and it would have been useful for people who don’t know the area I’m sure.

I’m really looking forward to reading the next book in the series, it’s called Fate & Fortune.