I stumbled across Death on a Longship when looking for Scotland-related books to read for a GoodReads group challenge. I don’t know if I liked it so well because of the writing style, the nice narrative pacing, or the introduction into a new (to me) culture and dialect. It's likely a combination of all of those. Writing to get the flavor of a dialect or cultural references across without bogging down a story can be dicey sometimes, but author Marsali Taylor nails it very nicely. She seasons conversations precisely right to keep the essence there but still allow the reader to pick up the meaning from context. Even so, she does have a translation of Shetland terms and phrases at the back, as well as some cultural context that the former anthropology student in me particularly loved.
It was quite the serendipitous find and a very happy read. As I was getting close to the end, I made myself slow down; I wasn’t ready to leave the Shetland yet or say fond farewells to Cass, Macrae, Magnie, Anders and his rat. Fortunately for me, this is the first in a series of mysteries involving the major characters. I do believe they will be my go-to for binge-reading whenever I feel the need to lose myself in a nicely done mystery in a time or place different from my own.
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