Highland Laddie Gone

De: Sharyn McCrumb

Narrado por: Davina Porter

In her third outing as amateur sleuth, Elizabeth MacPherson has the chance to revel in the rites of the old country at the annual Glencoe Mountain Games. But the innocent ethnic fair is cursed when the loathed Colin Campbell is found murdered. When a second reveler is found dead, Elizabeth lays to hunt and untangles all....

©1986 Sharyn McCrumb (P)1992 Recorded Books

Before the Ballad Novels there was Elizabeth Mc.

I am writing this because I do not want listeners to think that these early Sharyn McCrumbs will be like her more mature works such as She Walks These Hills. They are just as insightful, the characters are just as well drawn; but the humor is touched with a bit of sharpness and a dry wit. The main character is a young woman whose college major changes with the seasons. We can sympathize, shake our heads, be delighted, and at times be actually irritated as Elizabeth learns more from the people at this festival than she will ever learn in her classrooms. There are no car chases, explosions, or even street fights. But most of us can recognize the challenges Elizabeth faces. There are no mean streets in the lovely North Carolina mountains, but there are some mean people.

In Highland Laddie gone Elizabeth is asked to be Maid of the Cat at the Highland Games her family attended faithfully when she was growing up. She is a bit startled to meet a young scientist from Scotland who studies north sea marine mammals not whose tartans go with whose last names. Elizabeth and Cameron do manage to overcome speaking a "different language", and I do not mean scientific terms and ancient history.

I am thrilled that these books are on audible.

Scottish accents made this hard to understand

Don't get me wrong. I enjoyed Highland Laddie Gone. It has humor, Elizabeth falls in love, a couple of murders. Story line is not complicated but overall it's enjoyable. But I missed details because I couldn't understand some of the dialog because of the accent.

Well written

I have enjoyed Sharyn McCrumb’s books for years. This was a new series for me & I enjoyed it, though not quite as much as her BALLAD SERIES. That is just me though. The story line is interesting & more along the lines of a romance story with some intrigue & murder thrown in.

Disappointing

Having been truly impressed by the audio version of Sharon McCrumb's "Prayers the Devil Answers," I I was very surprised by the entirely different tone and shallower depth of this work. Though I welcome light-hearted mystery, I generally expect the plot line, and the role of the protagonist/mystery-solver, to emerge clearly within the first few chapters. In this case, I felt that the first many chapters were occupied with a introducing various characters and establishing setting, with no indication of what was at stake, or for whom I should be rooting. Perhaps I just didn't read up enough about the author's very different types of works, but I found this very surface-y, and only made it halfway through, largely due to the superior quality of the narration by Davina Porter.