Why a Booktrail?
2000s: Three generations of women from the Skelfs family take over the family funeral-home and PI businesses in the first book of a taut, page-turning and darkly funny new series.
A Dark Matter
What you need to know before your trail
Meet the Skelfs: well-known Edinburgh family, proprietors of a long-established funeral-home business, and private investigators…
When patriarch Jim dies, it’s left to his wife Dorothy, daughter Jenny and granddaughter Hannah to take charge of both businesses, kicking off an unexpected series of events.
Dorothy discovers mysterious payments to another woman, suggesting that Jim wasn’t the husband she thought he was. Hannah’s best friend Mel has vanished from university, and the simple adultery case that Jenny takes on leads to something stranger and far darker than any of them could have imagined.
As the women struggle to come to terms with their grief, and the demands of the business threaten to overwhelm them, secrets from the past emerge, which change everything…
Locations
ResetTravel Guide
Discover Edinburgh BookTrail style via its cemeteries in Dark Matter
This is the darkest tour of Edinburgh you will ever have. A funeral home located in Greenhill Gardens works across the city and has a map on its walls which someone mentions is essentially, a death map of the city. The cemeteries in and around the city are indeed major settings in the book as is the insides of the funeral home itself.
The city is evoked well as a whole and there are some interesting snippets of local knowledge and tips. One of these is about the Soderberg Bakery which has cafes dotted across the city. The one featured in the novel is along Middle Meadow Walk where Dorothy likes to go and see the flow of students. Partial to a cake too.
With the history of the body snatches born here in Edinburgh and the gothic overtones of the city, could you imagine a better backdrop than this for a story set in a funeral home which also doubles as a PI agency?
Booktrail Boarding Pass: A Dark Matter
Destination: Edinburgh Author/Guide: Doug Johnstone Departure Time: 2000s
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