Death of a Selkie

by D. P. Hart-Davis

Overview

A dark net tightens on the tiny fishing Scottish fishing community of Kildrumna as conflicting forces loom. Tensions mount between owner of an expanding salmon farming enterprise in the pristine bay, local conservationists and the owners of a sporting lodge. When renowned millionaire environmentalist and keen diver Gunnar Larsen arrives on the scene with his beautiful new wife Ravenna, a deadly chain of events unfolds.

Detective Chief Inspector Robb, on holiday there with his troubled teenage daughter Marina, have their trout, salmon, sea fishing and diving idyll interrupted in a way they could never have imagined.

Twisting and turning like a foul-hooked fish, D.P.Hart-Davis's latest sporting thriller highlights the tension between conservation and exploitation in Scotland's fastest-growing food industry…

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781913159290
Publisher:	Merlin Unwin Books
Publication date:	11/01/2021
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

D.P. Hart-Davis' career has been in magazines and journalism, and as fiction-buyer for the Mirror Group.
Author of 16 published novels, Hart-Davis was a columnist for the Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail, as well as for several country magazines, and now lives on a small farm in Gloucestershire. She is an experienced trout and salmon fisher and consulted widely with diving experts in her research on this book.

Read an Excerpt

So at eleven o'clock on a perfect June Day, Robb and his daughter leaned on the rail with the sun on their faces and wind tangling Marina's hair, watching with close attention as Gunnar ran the fat little ketch parallel to the shore on a course that brought her within hailing distance of the cages. Men in hi-vis jackets were busy with buckets and long-handled nets about the walkways that linked them, and sure enough there was soon a shout from the feed-barge.

'Shield Maiden, ahoy! Keep your distance, please! I repeat, Keep your distance!' A thick-set figure in oilskins with a loud-hailer reinforced the order with emphatic Keep-Off gestures.

'That'll be Yanis, the foreman. It riles him if boats come near his fish,' Logan warned. He knew Yanis well as an eager customer for any under-size lobsters caught in Logan's pots. Selling them was illegal since they should have been returned to the water, but under instruction from his masterful wife Olympia, who ran a fish-bar on the sea-front at Stairbrigg, Yanis snapped up anything of questionable size, and Logan added the cash he paid to the stash he was accumulating against the longed-for moment when his mother would allow him to leave home.

Gunnar took no notice, gliding nearer to the protecting ring of barbed wire until all the hi-vis clad workers had turned to stare at the broad-beamed intruder, and its passengers could see right into the round pens where the salmon jumped and splashed ceaselessly.

'Shield Maiden, alter course! Alter course immediately,' roared Yanis.

'He'll be calling the police next,' murmured Logan, resisting the temptation to wave to his cousins and former schoolfellows Alick and Hamish, who had taken jobs on the fish-farm as soon as they got their Leavers; and a few minutes later, Marina saw a blue-and-white chequered launch put off from the Stairbrigg jetty and speed towards them across the smooth water.

'Have you seen enough, kittunge? Then it is time to leave, I think,' said Gunnar coolly, and put the helm over. In silence they watched Yanis tuck the loudhailer under his arm and stump back to his hut on the feed-lot barge as the fish-farm dwindled in the distance, and Shield Maiden began to bob and lurch on hitting the turbulent currents of the Reekie Sound.