Murder in Paradise (19 page)

And so it was that Jeremy Faro fulfilled that early promise with a long and successful career as a chief inspector and as Queen Victoria's personal detective. He married Lizzie, a happy marriage sadly ended when she died in giving birth to a stillborn son. Their two daughters Rose and Emily went to live with their grandmother in Orkney while Faro took over 9 Sheridan Place, Newington with his old friend McFie's housekeeper, Mrs Brook. His stepson Vince became a doctor, helped solve many of his cases, and was eventually appointed as Junior Physician to the Royal Household.

Faro remained a widower and in his later years the Irish writer Imogen Crowe, whom he met on one of his cases, became his devoted companion.

Faro's subsequent cases are chronicled in:

Enter Second Murderer

Blood Line

Deadly Beloved

Killing Cousins

A Quiet Death

To Kill a Queen

The Missing Duchess*

The Evil That Men Do

The Bull Slayers*

Murder by Appointment

The Coffin Lane Murders

The Final Enemy*

Unholy Trinity

* also contained in the trilogy
Faro & the Royals

Rose Faro married her father's sergeant Danny McQuinn and through tragic domestic circumstances returned to Edinburgh in 1894 to follow in her father's footsteps, recorded in:

The Inspector's Daughter

Dangerous Pursuits

An Orkney Murder

Ghost Walk

Destroying Angel

For those interested in true crime, Madeleine Smith married George Wardle in 1861 and they had two children. After he died of cancer in 1910 she went to America and married for the second time. Her ‘Not Proven' verdict has been a subject of unfailing interest and speculation for more than a century. Most recent:
The Strange Affair of Madeleine Smith: Victorian Scotland's Trial of the Century
by Douglas MacGowan (Mercat Press: Edinburgh, 2007).

I am indebted to Edward Marston, author of the Railway Detective series by Allison & Busby, for information on Victorian railway carriages.

The Rose McQuinn series

1894. In a desperate attempt to recover from the loss of her husband and her baby son, Rose McQuinn returns home to Edinburgh from the American Wild West. Before long she unwittingly steps into the shoes of her father, the legendary Detective Inspector Faro, by agreeing to investigate the strange behaviour of Matthew Bolton, husband to Rose’s childhood friend Alice. From her isolated home at the foot of Arthur’s Seat and aided by a wild deerhound who has befriended her, Rose starts to piece things together, until she gets too near the truth and puts her own life in danger.

During a peaceful walk out on Arthur’s Seat, high above the city of Edinburgh, Rose McQuinn stumbles across the body of a woman in the ruins of St Anthony’s Chapel. Reporting her discovery to a nearby police constable, she assumes that the case is in safe hands. So she is shocked when she returns to the scene to find that both the body and the policeman have disappeared. Rose determines to pursue a discreet investigation into the mystery, but soon finds herself in a terrifying situation, cast in the role of the murderer’s second victim…

On a long-anticipated family visit to Orkney to see her sister Emily, Rose is unprepared for the sinister and unexpected events that occur following the discovery of a body by an archaeological team excavating a nearby peat bog. But the find is not that of the legendary thirteenth-century Maid of Norway, as they had expected, but that of a local woman, long presumed to have drowned. In this the most personal of all her investigations, Rose realises that revealing the killer’s identity can destroy for ever the happiness of those closest to her.

Rose McQuinn is on the threshold of marrying her lover, Detective Inspector Jack Macmerry of the Edinburgh Police. But pre-wedding jitters become the least of her worries when a nun from the local convent claims to have received a letter from Rose’s deceased first husband. Is the elderly nun simply confused, or could he really still be alive? Unnerved and determined to find out the truth before her wedding, Rose begins to investigate. However, after two suspicious deaths, all the signs suggest that a ghost is about to walk back into her life…

Autumn, 1897. Rose McQuinn has lost the love of her ambitious fiancé, Jack Macmerry, and now it seems she is to lose her elusive deerhound as well. Hubert Staines claims his mortally ill stepdaughter is Thane’s rightful owner, and Rose cannot refuse to return him. But when she arrives at the family home near Alnwick Castle in Northumberland, it soon becomes clear that Hubert has a hidden agenda. The family’s tragic history unfolds, revealing dark secrets that haunt those involved and a series of suspicious deaths… Is Rose to be the next victim?

The Tam Eildor series

July 1600. After rescuing King James from a runaway horse, the enigmatic Tam Eildor finds himself in the monarch’s favour, and the royal benevolence is furthered when Tam agrees to investigate the murder of Margaret Agnew, the Queen’s midwife. As Tam and his good friend Tansy Scott set about discovering who could have attacked her and why, they come across rumours of a buried secret from the King’s past – a secret that could put the King and members of the court in danger. With treacherous forces at work, the King is led away from the palace to Gowrie House in Perth, and into the heart of a mystery that still puzzles historians today…

August 1811. George, Prince of Wales, has his own reasons for welcoming Tam Eildor to the Royal Pavilion. His latest mistress, Sarah, Marchioness of Creeve, has been murdered in the royal bed; strangled with her own string of pearls. Newly created Prince Regent, George realises that a sordid scandal must be avoided at all costs, and enlists Tam’s services to quickly and – more importantly – quietly find the killer. But murder isn’t the only crime Tam has to solve: on the same night as the Marchioness’s death a priceless gemstone, the Stuart Sapphire, was stolen. With a double investigation on his hands and his own life in constant danger, Tam struggles to outwit the sinister forces that seem determined to prevent him from discovering the truth.

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A
LANNA
K
NIGHT
has written more than fifty novels (including fourteen previous titles in the successful Inspector Faro series), three non-fiction titles on RL Stevenson, two true crime books, numerous short stories and several plays since the publication of her first book in 1969. Born and educated in Tyneside, she now lives in Edinburgh. She is a member of the Scottish chapter of the Crime Writers’ Association, a founding member of the Scottish Association of Writers, and Honorary President of the Edinburgh Writers’ Club.

www.alannaknight.com

The Rose McQuinn series

The Inspector’s Daughter

Dangerous Pursuits

An Orkney Murder

Ghost Walk

Destroying Angel

Murder in Paradise

Quest for a Killer

The Tam Eildor series

The Gowrie Conspiracy

The Stuart Sapphire