Well of the Winds by Denzil Meyrick is a crime novel set in Scotland. The main character is DCI Daley, assisted by DS Scott and with CS Carrie Symington playing a major role in this story as well. This is one of a series – this is the first I have read of these books but this didn’t make a huge amount of difference to me and I understood the plot well.
Daley is called to a small Scottish island where a whole family has disappeared, seemingly in the middle of a meal. He doesn’t initially know what to make of this but first he finds a hidden room and then a diary written by his predecessor, Inspector Urquhart, which talks about investigations that he made during WW2. The fact that the story takes place on a small island, accessible only by boat, gives the book a claustrophobic feel in places. The island location and the landscape play important parts in the story.
The book links the two periods well and slowly the past reveals the future. Daley becomes impeded in his enquiries, however, by the involvement of the intelligence services who want some things to remain secret and by the people who need to keep some activities well hidden in the past. There are very few people left who remember what happened during the war, and most of those are hiding something. Soon the police officers are in jeopardy too.
This is an excellently plotted story which dips into history and resurrects a well-known figure whose existence has to be denied. There are plenty of twists and turns to keep you guessing about what is going on. It’s good fun to read but the characters are real enough to cause you to identify with them in their problems.
I would read other books by this author.
