Shadow Man

Travel Guide

Inverness

The city most famous for being close to the monster spotting favourite of Loch Ness, there are some very different monsters lurking in the city’s streets. Even the police station looks grim, like a low-rent office block. Burnett Road is the home to Inverness’s Murder Investigation Team.

“Inverness is growing away from its beginnings by the Ness, the fledging city spreading out towards Culloden and the new university and creeping up towards the hills”

The streets certainly come alive with gems thrown in such as the highest cafe in Inverness where characters are spotted eating, or the Crown on Academy Street where the police go for a pint. There’s scenes set in Ness Islands, a place you really should go when in the city of Inverness. A haven from the hustle and bustle!

Just outside of this city spitting dirt and darkness, there is a nice hotel in the countryside called Bunchrew House where despite the blue skies and air of relaxation the darkness has descended:

“Bunchrew House is small but startlingly pretty, like a French chateau in miniature right on the southern shore of the Beauly Firth.”

Most of the action takes place in and around the city of Inverness but there are some very picturesque journeys up to the Black Isle and the highlands. This is a mystery which has far reaching consequences and just goes to show that despite the accepted notion that the Highlands and islands are remote, peaceful and far from any kind of danger, the darkness which started to unfurl in Inverness has far reaching consequences

The Clearances

Even in a novel with grim goings on in the present, there is an interesting allusion to the clearances which took place in the Scottish Highlands many years ago.Farmers and people living on the land were  brutally evicted from their homes by corrupt landlords. This period in history shows how past violence and wrongs can never really be buried or forgotten. It’s a nice touch in a police procedural to bring the landscape and its history into the mix.