A fast-paced historical thriller set in Inverness in the wake of the Jacobite Rising of 1745. The first in a new series from twice CWA award-winning author S. G. MacLean, perfect for fans of C. J. Sansom and Andrew Taylor.
After the battle of Culloden, Micah Macpherson was left for dead on Drumossie moor. Wounded, his face brutally slashed, he survived only by pretending to be dead as the Redcoats patrolled the corpses of his Jacobite comrades.
Seven years later, with the clan chiefs routed and the Highlands subsumed into the British state, Micah lives a quiet life, working as a bookseller in Inverness. One day, after helping several of his regular customers, Micah notices a stranger lurking in the upper gallery of his shop, poring over his collection. But the man refuses to say what he's searching for and only leaves when Micah closes for the night.
The next morning Micah opens up shop and finds the stranger dead, his throat cut, and the murder weapon laid out in front of him - a sword with a white cockade on its hilt, the emblem of the Jacobites. With no sign of the killer, Micah wonders whether the stranger discovered what he was looking for - and whether he paid for it with his life. He soon finds himself embroiled in a web of deceit and a series of old scores to be settled in the ashes of war.
