Counterfeit Madam

April 11, 2011
The provost of Glasgow asks Gil Cunningham, the archbishop's quaester, to track down the source of counterfeit coins flooding the area in McIntosh's suspenseful eighth mystery set in 15th-century Scotland (after 2010's A Pig of Cold Vision). Gil's workload is doubled when Dame Isabella Torrance, a crusty old woman, is murdered by someone who inserted a nail in her ear. Isabella re-entered Gil's life after many years a short time before to propose a land transaction that would have exchanged two plots for the abandonment of Gil's foster-son's inheritance claim. The investigator suspects that the death may be connected with the presence of a brothel on one of the properties Isabella was seeking to barter. Gil and his wife, Alys, make a winning pair, and McIntosh deftly balances plot and period detail, though some might lament the lack of a glossary for archaic words like sasine.

May 15, 2011

A case of counterfeiting in 15th-century Scotland involves Archbishop's Quaestor (constable) Gil Cunningham and his wife Alys in a series of murders close to home.

John Sempill has openly acknowledged Alys' foster brother John McIan as his bastard son. Now Sempill is married and his wife is pregnant. So outspoken Dame Isabella Torrance, the godmother of Alys' sister, visits Alys and purposes a transfer of property to John McIan in return for his relinquishing the right to claim more. Sempill's property in Glasgow will provide good rents, and Dame Isabella sweetens the pot by offering to give Sempill's wife and Alys' sister some income-producing property in the countryside. But there is some confusion about the legal ownership of one of the parcels. When Dame Isabella is murdered, Gil and Alys get involved in the investigation. Gil, inspecting a brothel that's part of the property intended for McIan, is attacked on another property containing several workshops. Meantime, a flood of counterfeit coins makes Gil suspicious of some of the craftsman. He continues his investigations in town while Alys sneaks off to visit the property whose title is in doubt. Both of them find much more than they could have anticipated.

Gil's adventures (A Pig of Cold Poison, 2008, etc.) continue to provide satisfying, albeit convoluted, mysteries larded with historical detail.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

June 1, 2011
Husband-and-wife sleuths Gil and Alys Cunningham are hot on the trail of a cleverly concocted counterfeiting scheme when their investigation broadens to include murder. Determined to discover what the sudden influx of false coins to Glasgow has to do with a neighborhood brothel and the murder of feisty Dame Isabella Torrance, the two set out to solve interwoven mysteries. Fans of authentically detailed historical suspense should enjoy both the evocatively rendered setting and the unexpected twists and turns of the finely executed plot. Despite the current glut of medieval sleuths, Gil and Alys remain a remarkably original and consistently appealing pair of detectives.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)