Fate & Fortune
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1581: young St Andrews academic Hew Cullan is unhappy with his life and disillusioned with the law. After his father's death he is invited by the advocate Richard Cunningham to complete his legal education in Edinburgh as Richard's pupil at the bar. Among his father's things Hew finds a manuscript entitled 'In Defence of the Law', directed to the Edinburgh printer, Christian Hall. At first, he resists its influence, but when a young girl is found dead on the beach at St Andrews, he is left unsettled and confused. He resolves to take the book to press and agrees to Richard's offer. Embarking on his new life in the capital, he falls in love. His relationships are fraught with lies and secrets and lead to brutal murder on the borough muir. Hew suspects a link with the dead girl on the beach. As he begins his desperate search to find the killer, he finds that the truth lies closer to home.
Time & Tide
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In the swell of a storm, a ship is wrecked in St Andrews harbour. A young Flemish sailor, the last man aboard, collapses and dies at the inn. The cargo of the ship appears a welcome windfall but soon brings devastation to the town as petty squabbling turns to rage and tragedy. Hew traces the ship to its source in Ghent, where he uncovers a strange secret. Unwilling to allow the law to take its course, he returns once more to the bitter role of advocate, to find his deepest principles are tested to the core.
Friend & Foe
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St Andrews. 1583, and tensions are running high. Dissension rages between King and councillors, and between the separate factions of the Kirk. At St Mary’s college, the reformer Andrew Melville is unsettled by a series of unnatural events, while the ailing Archbishop Patrick Adamson plays out his darkest fantasies, in the safe seclusion of the castle vaults. Hew is called to investigate a mysterious incident and finds suspicion falling upon him as he is ensnared in a world of superstition, subterfuge and death. This new Hew Cullan story sees the academic lawyer once again in the company of his sister Meg and her husband, physician Giles Locke, in their most challenging case yet. Alliances are formed; there are old scores to be settled; old ghosts reappear and spies are abroad. The king’s escape from captivity throws all in confusion, and as Hew’s loves and loyalties are put to the test, his own life and future are no longer secure.
Queen & Country
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1587. After three long years, exiled from home and family, and drawn into the depths of the London underworld under the tutelage of Elizabeth’s spymaster Francis Walsingham, Hew returns to Scotland with his new English wife Frances. The execution of Mary, Queen of Scots has unleashed a torrent of anti-English sentiment in the Scottish people and fear in King James VI, jeopardising Hew’s now unlawful marriage. However, the king invites Hew to investigate the perplexing meaning of a death’s head painting that has come into his possession. What does it symbolise, and is it a message from his dead mother? And are the local painters all that they appear? If Hew solves the mystery, his marriage to Frances will be blessed. The stakes have never been higher as he embarks on a quest for love and life.
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