Death at Ardaig Castle is a clever and thoroughly enjoyable whodunnit by Daniel Sellers.  It is the fifth in his series of crime novels about Lola Harris, the police detective who is usually to be found in the environs of Glasgow.  This book, however, presents a case in an isolated part of the Highlands, marking a change in landscape and a slight shift in the mode of crime fiction.

At the beginning of the story, Lola has been persuaded by her sister to take a weekend away in the countryside to escape from her professional and personal problems.  (Not least of which is a complex investigation into apparent corruption in party political funding in Scotland.)  When they arrive at the surprisingly picturesque getaway cottages, it turns out there is an ulterior motive for the trip.  Frankie has secured them a weekend in the grounds of the wellness retreat Ardaig Castle, on the understanding that Lola will have a quiet chat with the manager about some threatening and upsetting anonymous letters which the staff have been receiving.

This situation quickly develops the outlines of a classic whodunnit: the castle becomes isolated by bad weather, a death occurs, a limited group of suspects all appear to have something to hide, and the detective starts to worry there will be further crimes if everything isn’t solved quickly.  And there are the rumours of ghosts to worry about as well.  The plot is handled neatly and effectively, and there are some recognisable character types amongst the people at the castle.  The narrative becomes satisfyingly complicated, and the denouement is twisty without feeling overly contrived.  I really enjoyed this novel.

I also found it intriguing.  It feels like something of a departure for Sellers and the Lola Harris novels, stepping aside from the more procedural lines of the series so far, and producing a more Golden Age-inflected book.  I’m curious as to whether this will be a one-off experiment (isolated from the other books in its remote castle), or whether the series is moving in this direction more generally.  In either case, this element of Death at Ardaig Castle adds to the complexity of the book, because there seems to be some genre exploration going on.  It seems telling, for example, that Lola has to be tricked into coming to the location of this novel: the long-running detective has been borrowed from her usual milieu on slightly false pretences, though she comes to make herself at home in the new kind of setting.

There is some very deft reworking of elements of older detective fiction: there are recognisable features which have to be explained or reshaped in a modern context.  For example, the character converges on a remarkable brooding castle, where some are guests expecting drinks and dinners, and some are staff behind the scenes.  However, this is not because a weekend party is taking place at a country house but rather because Ardaig Castle is now a wellness spa run by a slightly shady billionaire.  The location duly becomes cut off from the outside world by stormy weather, but this leads to Lola using the highland emergency communications system to keep in touch with the local police and the resilience team about their environmental issue.  (Resilience in this context meaning trying to get rid of the fallen trees that are blocking the only access road.)  The extra footwork needed by the novel to produce these elements in a contemporary context adds to the wit of the book.  It is atmospheric, but also wry in its handling of classic whodunnit mechanics. It almost feels as if this Lola novel has to work slightly harder in order to put its heroine into the story it wants to tell.

The appearance of these features does not feel parodic, though.  This is not a coy game played with the reader, it feels like a coherent part of the novel.  A number of crime writers have experimented with how Golden Age elements feel when reproduced in a later world.  P.D. James is the most striking example; her books are full of large country house-ish buildings which are not being used for the purposes for which they were built or intended.  In fact this is something of a feature of her detective fiction, as characters try to inhabit these buildings in ways which don’t quite suit them, or which even cause discord and violence.  There was a real air of P.D. James about the gothic castle, whose various additions at different time periods was described with a discerning eye, which is currently being used as a wellness retreat.  When a P.D. James novel turned up in the story, kept in a bedside drawer, it may well be a graceful nod to an influence.  (It may also be a mild red herring: the cover described seems to suggest that it’s a copy of The Private Patient, when I would say that Shroud for a Nightingale is a much stronger presence in this novel.)

The mention of other works of fiction brings Death at Ardaig Castle further into the detective fiction tradition.  Partly because the way the story is developed and handled echoes earlier writers, as does the fact that copies of their books are mentioned within the narrative.  Two Agatha Christies, one P.D. James and a Hitchcock film are dangled before the reader, in a way which makes them wonder if they should be thinking in terms of allusions and echoes.  Partly, as well, because allusion and citation is a feature of the Golden Age novel itself.  I don’t want to get too far into my own literary obsessions in this review, but a series of details of Death at Ardaig Castle summon up Gaudy Night, one of the most-cited Golden Age novels.  If Sellers is not deliberately writing his own version, pastiche or homage to Sayers’ novel, it seems to nonetheless have a striking presence in this book.  Of course, Gaudy Night is itself an allusive detective novel par excellence.  Gesturing in its direction puts Sellers in a tradition of intertextual writers, like Christie and James, who themselves reworked images from Sayers. 

However, since this is a review, I shall avoid getting dragged too far into where Death at Ardaig Castle sits in the literary history of the genre.  Its connection with other books certainly do not distract from the onward drive of the story.  Nor from the vivid sense of place which the book conjures up.  The book offers a sequence of striking locations for its action.  The glass orangery with a mirrored bar which mimics a peacock’s tail, the secret passage within the structure of the castle, the attics containing a deserted nursery.  The spaces of the story feel very dense, giving a strong sense that the reader is – like Lola – wandering through a great stone bulk with its own character and history.