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    Bone Rattler
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    Bone Rattler
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    Bone Rattler
    Ebook664 pages12 hours

    Bone Rattler

    By Eliot Pattison

    3.5/5

    ()

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    About this ebook

    The Edgar Award winner’s acclaimed mystery set in colonial America is “The Last of the Mohicans meets Braveheart, with a curious dash of CSI” (Entertainment Weekly).
     
    Unfairly convicted and force into indentured servitude, young Highland Scot Duncan McCallum finds himself aboard a prisoner ship bound for the New World. A series of mysterious deaths plagues the passengers and claims the life of Duncan’s dear friend Adam Munroe. Enlisted by his captors to investigate, a strange trail of clues leads Duncan into the New World and eventually thrusts him into the bloody maw of the French and Indian War.
     
    Duncan is indentured to the British Lord Ramsey, whose estate in the uncharted New York woodlands is a Heart of Darkness where multiple warring factions—the British, rogue Scots, the French, the Huron, and the Iroquois—are engaged in battle. Exploring a frontier world shrouded in danger, Duncan, the exiled chief of his near-extinct Scottish clan, finds that sometimes justice cannot be reached unless the cultures and spirits of those involved are resolved.
     
    “Having already won an Edgar for his Inspector Shan series, Pattison makes a strong bid for another with this outstanding” first novel in his acclaimed Bone Rattler series (Publishers Weekly, starred review).

    Editor's Note

    Historical whodunit adventure…

    Billed as “‘The Last of the Mohicans’ meets ‘Braveheart,’ with a curious dash of ‘CSI’” by Entertainment Weekly, “Bone Rattler” is a gripping mystery set in colonial America during the French and Indian war from Edgar Award-winning author Eliot Pattison. A Scottish highland warrior-turned-indentured-prisoner-turned-detective investigates a string of mysterious deaths on the American frontier in this historical whodunit adventure.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateMar 1, 2009
    ISBN9781582439549
    Author

    Eliot Pattison

    Eliot Pattison is the author of The Skull Mantra, which won the Edgar Award and was a finalist for the Gold Dagger, as well Water Touching Stone and Bone Mountain. Pattison is a world traveler and frequent visitor to China, and his numerous books and articles on international policy issues have been published around the world.

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    Reviews for Bone Rattler

    3.5/5

    9 ratings4 reviews

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    • 3/5
      At times, this book held my complete attention, but more often my mind would wonder while I was reading and I found myself having to go back and review to find out who said what when. Part of the problem is that I am not a big fan of historical fiction (although, to the book's credit, I now know much more about the French and Indian War than I did going in). The main character, a Scot named Duncan, is charged with solving one (and then more) murders in a New World settlement in the 1750's. He earns the pieces to the puzzle from the same finite set of characters VERY slowly. At times I wondered why Duncan had to pull teeth to get answers. I liked how the book displayed the clash of cultures and customs of the various parties - Scots, Indians, military, British.
    • 4/5
      This historical mystery is not the type that will have one turning pages way into the night rather it will have the reader slowly gathering clues fitting pieces of the jigsaw together. It starts aboad a convict ship bound for the americas carrying Scot highlanders. Several murders and suicides occur onship and Duncan McCullam the only edeucated Scot on board is charged with using his medical knowledge to solve not only these murders but several that occur once the convicts reach their destination. Very few answers are given and the clues are often vague and contradictory which from a mystery stand point is great-this is not a mystery one will have solved by page 100! Pattison also uses Sarah and Alex as a way to showcase both cultures. He does a great job not only defining the differences between the two but highlighting some of the striking similarities between them. He hasalso brought up a very little know fact-that the Highlanders post culloden often worked for the British side by side with the Iriquis against the French and Huron forces. He explores the similarities of both groups-each of which would lose their culture and lands to the british. All in all a very good story-It worked both from the mystery aspect and from the Historical fiction aspect.
    • 5/5
      Fantastic book. Loved the writer’s minimalist, in-and-out-of-shadows writing style. Fascinating way to get the personal understanding of what it might have been like to have been a Scot living in America during colonial times when entrepreneureal land grant holders set themselves up as demi-kings, defying the laws of the imperial homeland and “taming” the wilderness largely through despotism and butchery.Duncan McCallum is transported as a political prisoner from the Old Country into the New World. While crossing the Atlantic, some of his fellow passengers and friends meet suspicious deaths. All is not what it seems, not even the mysterious woman in the cell next his. Ashore in New York the killings continue and even his appointment as tutor to Lord Ramsey’s children with the trappings of normalcy does not stop them. In fact, the mystery deepens, leading Duncan to have to place his trust in a British lieutenant and several savage looking Iriquois as he finds himself becoming more deeply involved in uncovering the real murderer to save his wrongly accused friend.His investigation/escape leads him deep into the endless forest and submerses him ever more deeply into the culture and lore of the Six Nations, a people with whom he feels an affinity far greater than he does with the English overlords who are destroying both his Highland heritage and the traditions of the Native Americans.Intriguing glimpse into the French and Indian Wars, a most turbulent and overlooked period of Colonial American and world history, told in terms of the psychological and personal drama events caused in the lives of people engaged in true cultural warfare. Would enjoy reading more by this author
    • 3/5
      This mystery, set in Colonial America, includes several of the distinctive themes and elements of Pattison's Inspector Shan series: an aggressive, technologically advanced culture is colonizing and oppressing the native culture; the protagonist is a mystic skeptic whose actions are interpreted as miracles by others; the protagonist is constantly threatened by violence but declines to use it himself, instead relying on his own insight, first to figure out what is going on, and then to turn the tables on his persecutors. I found the first half of the book claustrophobic and confusing; if I hadn't read and liked the author's other books, I'd have probably given up. The second half improved considerably, with a wider range of characters and interesting dynamics among them. All of Pattison's books seem to me to be stories of existential hope set against a wider context of tragedy and social calamity. It's a distinctive vision, but it makes this story a surprisingly predictable in spite of the new setting.