Crime Tour of Scotland - next stop, Dundee!

                                                             This month we're off to the city of jute, jam and journalism for
                                                              our crime - and I don't think there's much competition for the 
                                                              spot!

This is the first in Wendy H. Jones' D.I. Shona McKenzie series. D.I. McKenzie is an appealing main character, a police officer with a keen eye for those she’d like to murder if such a thing were feasible, and Dundee is very sympathetically drawn despite the murders. A ‘misery memoir’ thread keeps us guessing about the murderer and her motives as a series of professional women are murdered.  I have to say I have a few misgivings about the investigation – it took a long time to find the connexion between the victims, which would have helped things along significantly. There were a quite a few missing commas, but otherwise this was well presented and very enjoyable, with some light humour. 3 on the scale, maybe 3.5.

Dundee has always had a bit of an image problem, and perhaps thirty years ago it was well-founded. Having the prominent Professor Dame Sue Black, forensic anthropologist, based there (she has recently taken a post in Leeds) was a bit of a mixed blessing - yes, famous, scholarly, always on television, but yes, it's dead bodies again! The city billed itself for some time as the 'City of Discovery', or as Billy Connolly translated it, 'We've got a boat!', as R.S.S. Discovery is berthed there as a maritime museum, along with H.M.S. Unicorn. The museum quarter is about to be seriously enhanced by the opening of the most northerly branch of the Victoria & Albert Museum. But if you still have any doubts about Dundee, visit it by train, from the south. When you cross the Tay Bridge (and you can still see the stumps of the one that fell down), put your Kindle down, be prepared for a sudden silence in the carriage and a scurry of photographers, and look west. The view of the Tay is jaw-droppingly beautiful.