SINK OR SWIM

It looks as if Wallace James's heart attack will sideline him not only from shooting and fishing but from nosing around into the drowning of Newton Lauder squire Kenneth Berry, who was evidently nearly saved by his archenemy, Colonel Ivor McInsch, MP. But while Wallace is tying flies and bemoaning his inactivity, he happens to overhear a conversation that strongly suggests the colonel is being blackmailed (for perjury? for murder? for some more benign lapse of judgment?). Aided by his formidable wife Janet, who's worth a book of her own, Wallace pulls as gently as any of Hammond's Highlands heroes (Mad Dogs and Scotsmen, 1996, etc.) at the thread that will unravel a tangled criminal skein. This time, though, the skein's a little too tangled, and the unraveling a little too muddled—though housebound Wallace is certainly one of Hammond's liveliest narrators.