Skelf Summer: The Big Chill (Skelf Book Two) by Doug Johnstone

 

Skelf Summer: The Big Chill (Skelf Book Two) by Doug Johnstone.

Published in ebook on 20th June 2020 and in paperback on 20th August 2020 by Orenda Books. 

From the cover of the book:

Haunted by their past, the Skelf women are hoping for a quieter life. But running both a funeral directors’ and a private investigation business means trouble is never far away, and when a car crashes into the open grave at a funeral that matriarch Dorothy is conducting, she can’t help looking into the dead driver’s shadowy life.

While Dorothy uncovers a dark truth at the heart of Edinburgh society, her daughter Jenny and granddaughter Hannah have their own struggles. Jenny’s ex-husband Craig is making plans that could shatter the Skelf women’s lives, and the increasingly obsessive Hannah has formed a friendship with an elderly professor that is fast turning deadly.

But something even more sinister emerges when a drumming student of Dorothy’s disappears and suspicion falls on her parents. The Skelf women find themselves sucked into an unbearable darkness – but could the real threat be to themselves?

Following three women as they deal with the dead, help the living and find out who they are in the process, The Big Chill follows A Dark Matter, book one in the Skelfs series, which reboots the classic PI novel while asking the big existential questions, all with a big dose of pitch-black humour.

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When a car crashes into an open grave at a funeral that Dorothy is conducting, ending the life of the driver and almost killing her in the process, she finds herself on an obsessive hunt for the identity of the young man at the wheel - a hunt that draws in both Jenny and Hannah too. Dorothy also becomes involved in the search for one of her music students, who has mysteriously gone missing.

Meanwhile, Jenny and Hannah have issues of their own, and the spectre of Craig hangs over them all as his trial approaches...

The first Skelf book, A Dark Matter, introduced us the the three amazing Skelf women - the matriarch Dorothy, her daughter Jenny, and Jenny's daughter Hannah - who found themselves in charge of both a funeral directors' and a private investigation business, and what an absolute corker it was!

This time around, our three women are still reeling from the chilling truth about the part Jenny's ex-husband Craig played in the dark misdeeds visited upon them, and the orgy of violence that brought matters to a shocking head. Battered and bruised, although seemingly healed on the surface, Dorothy, Jenny and Hannah are each looking for a way to deal with the scars they are hiding deep inside.

Doug Johnston really pulls out all the stops in this novel, and plays mercilessly with your emotions. Dorothy throws herself into her work, on both the funeral and investigation fronts, and uncovers some heart-breaking truths, while making a kind of peace with her situation, and possibly introducing a new member to the Skelf family of waifs and strays. There is a real sense of sadness in Dorothy's storyline, that brings to the fore her need to mother and protect, and allows Johnstone to shine a poignant light on the social problems on the streets of a city like Edinburgh. Hannah is struggling with the horrific truth about her father, despite the best efforts her her girlfriend Indy. She is facing a deep existential crisis, that cleverly gives us the most thought provoking of book titles for this second Skelf book, but she is much stronger than she realises.

However, it is in Jenny's part of the big picture where Johnstone has a ball the most with a sense of insidious darkness. Craig is more of a monster than ever, manipulating the women around him, like a spider sitting in the middle of an unpleasant web of lies and intrigue. He spins his threads to get them to play his macabre game and it's thoroughly delicious!

I loved that the Skelf women seem to be finding their feet running both a funeral and investigation business in this book and there was just the right amount of mix of each, with them feeding nicely into each other to make a satisfying whole - with a core of pitch black humour. It really made me chuckle each time someone brought up the fact that mixing and funerals and investigations was more than a little odd!

This gripping book thoroughly engrossed me from shocking start to unsettling finish, and I cannot wait to find out what happens next!

**Review originally published August 2020.

The Big Chill is available to buy now in paperback, ebook and audio formats. You can support indie publishing by buying direct from Orenda Books HERE.

Thank you to Orenda Books for sending me an ecopy of this book in return for an honest review.

About the author:

Doug Johnstone is the author of Fourteen novels, including The Great Silence, the third in the Skelfs series, which has been optioned for In 2021, The Big Chill, the second in the series, was longlisted for the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year. In 2020, A Dark Matter, the first in the series, was shortlisted for the McIlvanney Prize for Scottish Crime Novel of the Year and the Capital Crime Amazon Publishing Independent Voice Book of the Year award. Black Hearts (Book four), was published in 2022, with The Opposite of Lonely (book five) out in 2023.

Several of his books have been bestsellers and award winners, and his first science fiction novel, The Space Between Us, was a BBC2 Between the Covers pick.

He’s taught creative writing, been writer in residence at various institutions, and has been an arts journalist for twenty years. Doug is a songwriter and musician with five albums and three EPs released, and he plays drums for the Fun Lovin’ Crime Writers.

He lives in Edinburgh.