"solid amateur sleuth"

In Edinburgh George Lovelace, a retired Leicester University professor, visits Great Scot magazine editor and writer Jean Fairburn, a former academia also. He provides Jean with a gold coin for her to authenticate which he insists he found while bird watching near his home that appears to be part of Bonnie Prince Charlie's horde he allegedly left behind when he fled for France after the Culloden debacle in 1745. At the nearby museum, Jean learns that Lovelace brought in an antique last year so his story of needing her to help him with the law seems even more farfetched than when she first heard him tell her.

As she travels to talk further with George, Jean arranges an interview with American dot com millionaire Rick MacLyon, who recently bought the local castle. She arrives at the MacLyon appointment early having failed to find George before her meeting with the new lord of the manor. While waiting she senses a ghost and follows her feelings only to find the murdered corpse of George. As the police investigate, Jean finds herself embroiled in a weird conspiracy that ties back to the last Stuart pretender.

THE SECRET PORTRAIT is a solid amateur sleuth tale although the heroine had no plans to get involved in a murder mystery as she only was interested in finding the "mother lode" left behind by Charlie. The who-done-it has an intriguing late twist that fits the tone of the tale yet deftly will surprise most readers. Lillian Stewart Carl provides a fine tale that cleverly blends history with the present (a trademark she is known for -- see LUCIFER'S CROWN).

Harriet Klausner

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted April 8, 2005

Summary

Jean Fairbairn is a burned-out American academic working for a Scottish travel and history magazine. She writes articles on, as she puts it, how the legend meets the road and often blows a tire. In The Secret Portrait, an old man comes to her with a three hundred year old gold coin he's just discovered in the Western Highlands-where, he adds, he trained as a commando during World War II. Jean knows that one of Scotland's most famous (or infamous) historical figures, Bonnie Prince Charlie, hid barrels of gold coins in that area, coins that were never found. She and her ambitious partner/editor decide she should write about the coin. But the old man won't tell where he found it. Did he find it on the property of an American dot-com millionaire, Rick MacLyon, who's just rebuilt an old house in the area?

Jean heads for the Highlands, and finds not a hoard of gold coins but a murder—and a police detective named Alasdair Cameron. Alasdair is an intelligent cop who is suffering from his own case of burn-out. At first he's suspicious of Jean. Soon, though, he realizes she's an innocent bystander, one who has historical knowledge essential to solving the case.

Jean however, doesn't see herself as innocent. The more questions she asks, the more she's afraid she had a role, however unwitting, in the murder. She has a moral obligation to face whatever danger she attracts by helping Alasdair-and to face the ghost that walks the mansion's dark corridors.

The solution to the mystery is rooted not just in contemporary tartan fantasy, but also in events dating back to World War II and beyond, all the way to 1745 and Bonnie Prince Charlie's rebellion. That solution brings Jean and Alasdair together personally as well as professionally. Emotionally burned as they both are, though, togetherness is as difficult as finding a murderer.