Undiscovered Scotland

 

We like to think our book reviews here on Undiscovered Scotland are objective. Just occasionally, achieving that becomes more challenging than usual. We should therefore start this review by declaring an interest. "Bloody Orkney" was written by a member of the team here at Undiscovered Scotland. The potential conflict of interest goes even further than that, however, because the book is published by Arachnid Press Ltd, which is very closely related to Undiscovered Scotland.

So, with all that out in the open, if we'd simply stumbled across "Bloody Orkney" by Ken Lussey, would we recommend it? Well, yes, obviously, or we'd not be involved in its publication. But then you'd expect us to say that, wouldn't you? Rather than seek to give opinions, we'll confine the rest of the review to a description drawn from the publisher's blurb.

"Bloody Orkney" is a fast-paced thriller set in Scotland during World War Two. It’s November 1942. Bob Sutherland, Monique Dubois and the Military Intelligence 11 team fly in to review security in Orkney, home to one of the most important and most heavily defended naval anchorages in the world.

But an unidentified body has been found. It becomes clear that powerful men have things they’d rather keep hidden and MI11’s arrival threatens the status quo. Then Bob stumbles over a ghost from his past and things get far too personal.

He and Monique are called away to resolve a crisis at a secret experimental base at Gruinard Bay in Wester Ross. When they return to Orkney, they find that the rules have been rewritten and they are in very real danger.

Bloody Orkney is available as a paperback from the publishers and as a Kindle edition from Amazon (paid link). It is a standalone novel and is the third of Ken’s thrillers set in Scotland during World War Two to feature the same central characters.