John MacKenzie
5 primary works
Book 1
Mystery surrounds the murder of Sir Lachlan MacLean, an impoverished Highland laird. With bad debts, family quarrels, and shady associates, Sir Lachlan had many enemies. But while motives are not hard to find, evidence is another thing entirely. Lawyer John MacKenzie and scribe Davie Scougall turn investigator to try to track down the murderer.
Book 2
I confess that I am a witch. I have sold myself body and soul unto Satan. My mother took me to the Blinkbonny Woods where we met other witches. I put a hand on the crown of my head and the other on the sole of my foot. I gave everything between unto him.
Scotland, late seventeeth century. A young woman is accused of witchcraft. Tortured with pins and sleep deprivation, she is using all of her the Scottish witch-hunt began.
Probably more than a thousand men and women were exectued for witchcraft before the frenzy died down. When Edinburgh-based Advocate John MacKenzie and his assistant Davie Scougall investigate the suspicious death of a woman denounced as a witch, they find themselves in a village overwhelmed by superstition, resentment and puritanical religion. In a time of spiritual, political and social upheaval, will reason allow MacKenzie to reveal the true evil lurking in the town, before the witch-hunt claims yet another victim?
Book 3
Scotland in 1688 – a nation bitterly divided by religion and politics where the King’s pro-Catholic policies have unleashed the sectarian hatred of extreme Protestants.
Edinburgh is a powder-keg, packed with plotters planning revolution. The mob is on the High Street each night burning effigies of the Pope and causing mayhem.
When a nobleman is assassinated by a Catholic fanatic, Protestant anger reaches fever pitch. Lawyers John MacKenzie and Davie Scougall must investigate the killing, but their relationship is tested as never before when they find themselves on opposing sides of the political divide.
To make matters worse, a killer is stalking the stinking streets; a disciple of revolution; a butcher in the name of God; a pilgrim of slaughter.
Book 4
Book 5
Set in Edinburgh in 1690. The body of a wealthy merchant is discovered in his home in the city centre. Was his killing the result of a robbery gone wrong? The vicious mode of his death seems to suggest otherwise. Scotland is in upheaval as political and religious tensions boil, and there is mystery concealed behind the walls of Van Diemen's Land. MacKenzie and Scougall investigate.