One town. Five women. Dark events. 

Life is not easy for the women of Glasdrum… 

A skeleton is unearthed, too many walkers are falling to their deaths off mountain cliffs, and the local pub doesn’t know how to make a decent raspberry daiquiri. 

Single mother Megan is a hill runner and cannabis dealer, an unlikely friend of well-to-do Finella, whose confident appearance hides struggles with her unpleasant husband and unruly children. 

Vicky is Finella’s child-minder, and when Finella’s husband starts digging about in her past, he discovers she has a secret. How far will she go to protect it? 

Glasdrum is a culture shock to Londoner Sarah, but she finds friendship with local journalist Catriona, recently returned to her home town but haunted by memories from her past. 

The women battle through daily life while the spectre of death looms over the town. Could one of them be living with a killer? 

I read a few books on holiday this year, but Glasdrum was by far my favourite. Set in a fictional town in the Scottish highlands,  Glasdrum makes for a masterpiece of pathetic fallacy – the backdrop is gloomy and grey, the rain is lashing down and summer is stubbornly refusing to arrive. I found the setting in particular to be very powerful and on more than one occasion found myself shuddering as MacBain’s prose made Scotland’s beautiful west coast seem suddenly so forbidding.

Glasdrum is a third person narrative pieced together from the points of view of several women as they grapple with tricky personal lives which are not made any easier by recent unnerving events, the deaths of hikers in the mountains nearby, and the literal skeletons found in the back garden. I found MacBain’s characters to be well-drawn, realistic and easy to relate to. I particularly liked Megan, a rough-round-the-edges single mum, whose unlikely friendship with well-to-do-but-falling-apart Finella injected just the right amount of humour into the story.

In addition to the heroines there are, of course, a number of villains in Glasdrum. I don’t want to say too much about them as I wouldn’t like to spoil the story, but suffice to say that for me there were one or two who I really loved to loathe. Whether they’re the murderers…well, you’ll have to read it to find out. Certainly, if you’re anything like me you won’t easily manage to guess ‘whodunnit’ – MacBain’s plot is a fairly complex one which takes the reader through a good number of twists and turns and keeps you wondering until the very end.

A gripping read, perfect for enjoying from the comfort of your sun lounger. Five stars.