There was twa sisters in a bowr,
Edinburgh, Edinburgh
There was twa sisters in a bowr,
Stirling for ay
There was twa sisters in a bowr,
There came a knight to be their wooer.

Human beings have always been fascinated with the unknown. We want to know if there is something else out there. Where do we go when we die? Some believe we go to an afterlife, Heaven, Nirvana, the Elysian Fields. But what about when the death is especially violent? Does some haunted shade remain, trying desperately to make contact beyond the veil, to right a wrong perhaps? For Ringan Laine and his love Penny Wintercraft-Hawkes seeing the unseen has become a regular occurence but communication beyond the veil is a tricky thing and can sometimes have unintended results.

Things start out well enough. Ringan is busy working on a new album with his band when Penny's brother Stephen comes back to England after decades away to claim his inteheritance, a plot of land on the isolated and desolate Isle of Dogs in London. Stephen and his new wife Tamsin request Ringan's assistance as they want to build a Tudor manor house and would like it to be as close to period as possible. Ringan, being somewhat of an expert in the time period, agrees to help. As soon as he steps foot on the plot of land the trouble starts. In previous cases Penny was the one to have visions. This time it's Ringans turn. He starts to become haunted with sleeping and waking visions of a murder that took place in the time of Henry Tudor. All signs begin to show that the murder involved one or more of Ringans Scottish ancestors and they won't leave him alone until he unravels the truth.

This novel is the fourth in Deborah Grabien's Haunted Ballad series. The novel titles correspond to old folk songs that are being played by Ringans band. It's an interesting idea and I like the way the author unraveled a somewhat gruesome and twisting song and turned some truth from it. I'm also a fan of historical documentation and the story had quite a bit as friends of Ringan and Penny attempt to locate the source of the haunting.

I've not read the other books in the series so I can't speak for them but this one was good. I can't say that it was "edge-of-my-seat" good but I did like it. It may be that I need to read the others before I can truly begin to sympathize with the characters but the story itself was worthwhile and made for good reading.
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Hardcover: 240 pages
Publisher: St. Martin's Minotaur (October 17, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN: 0312357575
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