Lament for a Maker — Michael Innes

A London detective investigates when a troubled Scottish laird takes a fall in this classic British mystery by the author of Hamlet, Revenge!.

Strange things are happening around the remote Castle Erchany, located in the Scottish Highlands. The miserly and reclusive laird, Ranald Guthrie, roams the castle's freezing halls, reciting an old poem over and over: Timor mortis conturbat me. Fear of death disturbs me . . .

Then on a wild winter night, Guthrie plummets to his death from his castle's tower. Was it an accident? Was it suicide? Or was it murder?

Suspicion falls on a local man, but when Insp. John Appleby arrives from the Met in London, he doubts this solution. To discover the truth, Appleby immerses himself in the dead man's final days in a gloomy, gothic castle. Of course, he must be on his guard, because there's no telling whether someone else might fall victim to another “accident.”

“The simple-seeming and single-seeming plot of Lament for a Maker holds about as many layers of complication as a first-class mystery story could well hold without bursting, and . . . Michael Innes manages this complication with the lucidity of a master.” -- The Observer

“Magnificently written.” -- The Times Literary Supplement

“A grand and ghastly tale with a surprising double climax.” -- The New Yorker