In 2024, The Crow Moon was an intriguing debut by British author Suzy Aspley and The Bone Mother is its sequel. Both books are gothic mysteries featuring Martha Strangeways as she investigates an unusual murder. The author concepts a special blend weaving together modern murder investigations with Scottish folklore. The Crow Moon was shortlisted for the Crime Fiction Lover Best Debut Novel in our 2024 awards.
Martha still lives in Strathbran but there have been a few changes in her life. Her son Dougie is off to university in Newcastle. She and her ex, Peter, have worked through their grief over the loss of their twins and are now enjoying spending time together.
Orla, her best friend and a fellow journalist is also living in the area. Heavily pregnant and feeling vulnerable on her own, she has joined a private Facebook group called the Sofa Sisters as a distraction. Strange little things happening around her home leave her unsettled.
Aspley grabs our attention in the very first chapter. Arthur is a lineman for the railway. He is walking along the tracks to assess whether anything needs repair. Suddenly, he spots something glinting in the sun. Arthur also notices a faint smell of a toilet cleaner in the air. He realises that somebody on the train from Glasgow that just went by must have flushed something down the toilet which empties onto the ballast. Getting closer, he sees it was a hammer shaped earring, still attached to an ear lobe, that caught his attention. Shockingly, there is no sign of the rest of the body.
The gruesome discovery has Martha’s former editor enticing her back to work. She connects with her friend, Detective Inspector Derek Summers about the case. He trusts her to keep any information that he shares confidential knowing that if she finds anything out she’ll share it with him.
Things get even creepier. The verger of St Conan’s Kirk discovers a corpse of a young woman near some ancient standing stones near the church. Her body has been positioned in a sacrificial manner and a hammer shaped earring is in her remaining ear.
Interviewing Arthur for the paper, Martha finds out that that the hammer is the symbol of the Cailleach, a winter witch also known as the Bone Mother. It represents her strength and she uses it to shape mountains. Cailleach appears during the harvest when there is a fine line between the living and the dead. People visit her shrine to make offerings of flowers, personal items and animal bones.
This pagan shrine is at risk. Adam Wilding, a wealthy developer, has presented a plan to the government to build a major hydroelectricity plant in the valley where Cailleach’s shrine is located. Some in the area are looking forward to the jobs the project will bring. Others wish to protect the stones, which represent the Bone Mother and her family. Some of the young women belonging to the Sofa Sisters have been hiking solo to visit the shrine.
There are multiple linking storylines from different perspectives in The Bone Mother. Although most events happen in the fall of 2019, there are a few chapters that are set at different times. This is easy to follow as dates are provided at the beginning of each chapter. Apsley does some master plotting and pulls all of these threads together to create a huge ball of tension.
The tension explodes on Halloween, which falls on the same date as Samhain, an ancient Celtic Festival when, according to folklore, the Bone Mother returns to oversee the coming Winter.
Plan your reading time well. Once I reached this point in the book, I could not put it down as I was so caught up in the action. Like all great gothic mysteries, The Bone Mother has lots of family secrets with a hint of the supernatural.
Also see Killing Jericho by William Hussey, The Stranger Diaries by Elly Griffith or The Winters by Lisa Gabriele.
Orenda Books
Print/Kindle
£6.49
CFL Rating: 5 Stars
