Books by Susan McDuffie

A historical mystery set in 1375, the fourth in the award winning Muirteach MacPhee mystery series. Muirteach and his wife journey to Edinburgh Castle. A senseless death plunges them into a sea of intrigue that stretches from Scotland across the icy oceans to the far northern lands of the Norse, leaving treachery and murder in its wake.

Oxford, 1374: At the command of the Lord of the Isles, Muirteach and his wife Mariota accompany Donald, the lord's surly thirteen-year-old son, to Oxford. Shortly after their arrival a winsome tavern maid disappears. Muirteach attempts to help Undersheriff Grymbaud with the investigation, as well as keep Donald at his studies and out of the taverns. He has little success with either venture. Mariota thirsts to attend medical lectures at the schools and seeks a way to gain admittance to these classes.An Oxford master is brutally bludgeoned to death, and Grymbaud asks Muirteach to investigate the slaying. The arrest of an aged servant for the murder stirs the ever-simmering discord between townsfolk and university students. Then Mariota vanishes.Gleaning clues from a cryptic manuscript and desperate to save his wife, a determined Muirteach tracks a wily killer through a dark and twisted labyrinth of deceit.

Autumn 1373: The grandson of the powerful Lord of the Isles vanishes on the windswept island of Colonsay, and rumors fly that he has been spirited away by the faerie. Muirteach MacPhee investigates, suspecting the boy’s disappearance has more to do with the mysterious piece of gold the lad found before he vanished. Mariota Beaton arrives from Islay to aid Muirteach, but she struggles with demons of her own.The island of Colonsay is rife with tales of faerie changelings and the buried bones of an infant found in a nearby cave. Muirteach’s investigation brings past grievances and old wounds to light, but can he save the life of the missing boy, or his burgeoning relationship with Mariota?This paperback edition includes a bonus novelette. In “The Watergate” Muirteach MacPhee accompanies the Lord of the Isles to meet with King Robert II at Urquhart Castle where the death of a beautiful woman draws Muirteach into an even deeper mystery. 

Scotland 1373: Crispinus, the head of Oronsay Priory, is found dead, strangled and battered, his mouth stuffed with sand, in the middle of the tidal strand separating the holy island of Oronsay from the larger island of Colonsay. The Lord of the Isles, overlord of the islands, assigns the task of finding the killer to Muirteach, the Prior’s bastard son.            Since breaking with his father and leaving the monastery, Muirteach has spent his time acting as scribe for his uncle, an island chieftain.  Muirteach’s father, a powerful churchman, leaves behind a mistress and several other bastards as well as his embittered eldest son, who is thankful he will never hear the words, “My bastard son, the cripple” again.             As Muirteach seeks to find his father’s murderer he is helped by the physician Fearchar Beaton, and his daughter Mariota. Muirteach himself is suspected of the murder, as are the Prior’s mistress, her family, and the sub-prior.  The killer strikes again, His Lordship wants the mystery solved before the Pope and the King in Edinburgh learn of it, and Muirteach himself must come to terms with his own troubled relationship with his father. Muirteach’s investigation submerges him deep into a whirlpool of deceit, long buried sins, and treachery, from which no one emerges unscathed.