Format: Hardcover, 336 pages
Release Date: May 20, 2025
Publisher: Minotaur Books
Source: Publisher
Genre: Mystery & Detective / Historical
Death at a Highland Wedding is the fourth installment in New York Times bestselling author Kelley Armstrong's gripping Rip Through Time Novels.
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After slipping 150 years into the past, modern-day homicide detective Mallory Atkinson has embraced her new life in Victorian Scotland as housemaid Catriona Mitchel. Although it isn’t what she expected, she's developed real, meaningful relationships with the people around her and has come to love her role as assistant to undertaker Dr. Duncan Gray and Detective Hugh McCreadie.
Mallory, Gray, and McCreadie are on their way to the Scottish Highlands for McCreadie's younger sister's wedding. The McCreadies and the groom’s family, the Cranstons, have a complicated history which has made the weekend quite uncomfortable. But the Cranston estate is beautiful so Gray and Mallory decide to escape the stifling company and set off to explore the castle and surrounding wilderness. They discover that the groom, Archie Cranston, a slightly pompous and prickly man, has set up deadly traps in the woods for the endangered Scottish wildcats, and they soon come across a cat who's been caught and severely injured. Oddly, Mallory notices the cat's injuries don't match up with the intricacies of the trap. These strange irregularities, combined with the secretive and erratic behavior of the groom, put Mallory and Duncan on edge. And then when one of the guests is murdered, they must work fast to uncover the murderer before another life is lost.
Death at a Highland Wedding, by Kelley Armstrong, is the Fourth installment in the author's A Rip Through Time series. This novel continues the adventures of Mallory Atkinson, a modern-day homicide detective who, after slipping 150 years into the past, inhabits the body of housemaid Catriona Mitchel in Victorian Scotland in 1870. The story begins as Mallory, now settled into her role as assistant to undertaker Dr. Duncan Gray and Detective Hugh McCreadie, along with Duncan's sister Isla, travels to the Scottish Highlands for the wedding of McCreadie’s younger sister, Fiona, to Archie Cranston.
The McCreadie and Cranston families share a complicated history, casting a tense atmosphere over the festivities at the Cranston estate. Seeking respite from the strained social dynamics, Mallory and Duncan explore the estate’s wilderness, only to stumble upon a disturbing discovery: deadly traps set for endangered Scottish wildcats, authorized by the groom himself. When a guest is found murdered, suspicions mount, and Mallory’s 21st-century detective skills combine with Duncan’s pioneering forensic techniques to unravel a web of secrets, motives, and deception.
As the body count rises, the duo must race against time to identify the killer before more lives are lost. The murder mystery is layered with red herrings, unexpected twists, and a cast of suspects, each with their own secrets, that keeps readers guessing. Including an incompetent new constable adds humor and frustration, forcing Mallory and Duncan to navigate bureaucratic obstacles while solving the case. The novel delivers several surprises, from plot twists to a particularly satisfying revelation at the end that ties up loose ends while opening doors for future installments.
Armstrong balances the darker elements of murder and betrayal with moments of hope, friendship, and romance, ensuring an emotionally rewarding experience. The most curious aspect is that Isla and Hugh finally seem to be moving in the direction. Does that mean that Mallory and Duncan will follow? Guess we must continue the series to find out.
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ONE
There’s nothing quite like a Highland wedding. I say this as if I’ve been to dozens. I’ve gone to two, both times as my grandmother’s plus-one, attending the weddings of happy couples I’d never actually met and had to keep checking a note on my phone to remember who they were.
This time it’s different. Okay, I’m still a plus-one. And I still don’t know the happy couple. But instead of keeping notes on my phone, I have them written on a piece of paper, stuffed deep into the voluminous pockets of my equally voluminous layers of Victorian dress.
The last wedding I went to in the Scottish Highlands was June 2016. This one is also taking place in June … 1870.
There’s a story there. A long one. The short version is that I passed through time at the fickle whim of some unknown cosmic force. My nan named that force Fate and said I am exactly where I was always supposed to be. Which is apparently in the body of a buxom blond twenty-year-old housemaid instead of an athletic brunette thirty-one-year-old police detective.
I have yet to appreciate that part of the switch, but I must appreciate where else I landed—in the household of a chemist and her doctor-turned-undertaker brother, who works in early forensic science. Along with their police-detective friend, they know my story, so I’m no longer scrubbing chamber pots. I’m the assistant to that forensic scientist, Dr. Duncan Gray. I’m also, apparently, his plus-one for this wedding, which is for Detective Hugh McCreadie’s younger sister … Iona? Fiona? It’s in my notes.
At the moment, we’re in a coach, heading into the countryside. For propriety’s sake, Gray should sit beside his sister, but since no one can see us in here, we’ve maneuvered McCreadie to sit beside Isla instead. He’s across from me—to make room for both Isla’s skirts and mine—and Gray is beside me, separated by a decorous handspan gap between my skirts and his thighs.
I’m wearing a traveling dress, which means shorter skirts and extra petticoats for warmth. My bustle pad makes the jostling journey more comfortable. I’m warm and snug, and it would be lovely, if not for the atmosphere.
Any other time, we’d be chattering away, excited about a rare country holiday. Instead, it feels as if we’re going to a funeral, everyone somber and staring out windows, with Isla occasionally casting anxious glances at McCreadie.
This is not four friends off to a rousing Highland wedding. It’s three friends going along to support the fourth—McCreadie—who looks like he’d rather be at work.
I don’t know why McCreadie is estranged from his family. Now that we’ve all become friends, I think I could get that information easily, but they seem to have forgotten that I don’t know, and it’s awkward to ask. So I’ve been playing detective, putting together the puzzle pieces.
I know McCreadie’s family is well-to-do. Upper middle class, like the Grays. That’s how the boys became friends—they attended the same school. Despite the estrangement, McCreadie is still well-off for a police detective—criminal officer, as they’re called in Victorian Scotland. I suspect he receives some family money. I know the break happened when he’d been in his early twenties, around the time he became a police officer, which is also around the time he’d broken off an engagement. I don’t know how these three things—the law-enforcement career, the broken engagement, and the familial estrangement—are connected, but I suspect they are.
As for his family, he has one sibling—the sister getting married, who is significantly younger. Like Gray, McCreadie is thirty-one, and his sister seems to be about twenty-one. In the modern world, we sometimes get the impression that Victorian women were all married off at eighteen. In reality, McCreadie’s sister is marrying at what’s considered the perfect age, as it was for most of the twentieth century.
Any ill blood between McCreadie and his family doesn’t extend to his sister, which is why we’re here. She asked—begged—him to come, and so he has, for her.
Now we’re rumbling along in this coach with our groom, Simon, driving and the thirteen-year-old parlormaid, Alice, riding beside him, having been invited ostensibly as Isla’s lady’s maid, but really to give the girl a holiday in the countryside.
When Isla casts yet another anxious glance McCreadie’s way, I decide it’s up to me to break this ice, which I do in the most time-honored of road-trip ways.
“Are we there yet?” I say, peering through the dusty window. “It’s so much faster with the bridge.”
That gets McCreadie’s attention. There are people who are good at long, morose silences—such as the guy sitting beside me—but McCreadie fairly leaps on this excuse, his handsome face lightening in a smile.
“Bridge?” he says. “Over the Forth?”
“Yep.”
“How is that even possible?”
“I’m not an engineer,” I say. “But there’s also a railroad bridge that I’m pretty sure gets built in this century.”
“They are starting one next year,” rumbles a voice beside me.
I glance over to see Gray, relaxing with his eyes still shut.
I elbow him. “Tell us more.”
He sighs. “I do not know more. I only heard that they are beginning a suspended bridge for trains.”
I frown. “Are you sure? I don’t think they start construction until near the end of this century.” I pause, thinking hard. “No, they did build another one, but it coll—” I snap my mouth shut. “Never mind.”
Isla’s brows rise. “Are you suggesting that if another bridge is built first, we should not use it?”
“Er, probably not.”
“Well, I for one might be willing to play the odds, if such a thing comes about,” McCreadie says. “Taking the ferry really does make this an interminable trip. Dare I ask how long it would take in your day, Mallory?”
“With bridges and motor cars? An hour to Stirling Castle. So probably two hours to where we’re going.”
Isla sighs. “I was born in the wrong century.”
“What is going on out there?” McCreadie says, opening his window to poke his head through. “I swear we have slowed.”
“See what you have done?” Gray says to me. “A few moments ago, we were all perfectly content with our eight-hour coach ride, and now everyone is complaining.”
“You spent all of yesterday moaning about spending all of today in a coach.”
His eyes narrow. “I mentioned it once.”
“Once at breakfast, once while we were dissecting that liver, once while—”
“I had resigned myself to the journey,” he says. “And now you have spoiled it. Remember whose coach this is. It will be a much longer trip if you walk.”
“Can I walk?” I say. “Please?” I lean toward McCreadie’s open window. “I’m sure I can move faster than this.”
“There does appear to be some sort of slowdown,” McCreadie says, still looking out the window.
“See what you did?” Gray aims a mock glare my way. “You complain about our speed, and the universe takes umbrage.”
“Can you tell what’s going on up there?” I ask McCreadie.
His smile sparks. “No, which means we ought to investigate.”
McCreadie raps on the roof for Simon to stop the carriage. As I gather my skirts, Gray rises and reaches for the door handle.
“Opening the door for us?” McCreadie says. “Very kind, but unnecessary. Stay right there and nap—”
There’s nothing quite like a Highland wedding. I say this as if I’ve been to dozens. I’ve gone to two, both times as my grandmother’s plus-one, attending the weddings of happy couples I’d never actually met and had to keep checking a note on my phone to remember who they were.
This time it’s different. Okay, I’m still a plus-one. And I still don’t know the happy couple. But instead of keeping notes on my phone, I have them written on a piece of paper, stuffed deep into the voluminous pockets of my equally voluminous layers of Victorian dress.
The last wedding I went to in the Scottish Highlands was June 2016. This one is also taking place in June … 1870.
There’s a story there. A long one. The short version is that I passed through time at the fickle whim of some unknown cosmic force. My nan named that force Fate and said I am exactly where I was always supposed to be. Which is apparently in the body of a buxom blond twenty-year-old housemaid instead of an athletic brunette thirty-one-year-old police detective.
I have yet to appreciate that part of the switch, but I must appreciate where else I landed—in the household of a chemist and her doctor-turned-undertaker brother, who works in early forensic science. Along with their police-detective friend, they know my story, so I’m no longer scrubbing chamber pots. I’m the assistant to that forensic scientist, Dr. Duncan Gray. I’m also, apparently, his plus-one for this wedding, which is for Detective Hugh McCreadie’s younger sister … Iona? Fiona? It’s in my notes.
At the moment, we’re in a coach, heading into the countryside. For propriety’s sake, Gray should sit beside his sister, but since no one can see us in here, we’ve maneuvered McCreadie to sit beside Isla instead. He’s across from me—to make room for both Isla’s skirts and mine—and Gray is beside me, separated by a decorous handspan gap between my skirts and his thighs.
I’m wearing a traveling dress, which means shorter skirts and extra petticoats for warmth. My bustle pad makes the jostling journey more comfortable. I’m warm and snug, and it would be lovely, if not for the atmosphere.
Any other time, we’d be chattering away, excited about a rare country holiday. Instead, it feels as if we’re going to a funeral, everyone somber and staring out windows, with Isla occasionally casting anxious glances at McCreadie.
This is not four friends off to a rousing Highland wedding. It’s three friends going along to support the fourth—McCreadie—who looks like he’d rather be at work.
I don’t know why McCreadie is estranged from his family. Now that we’ve all become friends, I think I could get that information easily, but they seem to have forgotten that I don’t know, and it’s awkward to ask. So I’ve been playing detective, putting together the puzzle pieces.
I know McCreadie’s family is well-to-do. Upper middle class, like the Grays. That’s how the boys became friends—they attended the same school. Despite the estrangement, McCreadie is still well-off for a police detective—criminal officer, as they’re called in Victorian Scotland. I suspect he receives some family money. I know the break happened when he’d been in his early twenties, around the time he became a police officer, which is also around the time he’d broken off an engagement. I don’t know how these three things—the law-enforcement career, the broken engagement, and the familial estrangement—are connected, but I suspect they are.
As for his family, he has one sibling—the sister getting married, who is significantly younger. Like Gray, McCreadie is thirty-one, and his sister seems to be about twenty-one. In the modern world, we sometimes get the impression that Victorian women were all married off at eighteen. In reality, McCreadie’s sister is marrying at what’s considered the perfect age, as it was for most of the twentieth century.
Any ill blood between McCreadie and his family doesn’t extend to his sister, which is why we’re here. She asked—begged—him to come, and so he has, for her.
Now we’re rumbling along in this coach with our groom, Simon, driving and the thirteen-year-old parlormaid, Alice, riding beside him, having been invited ostensibly as Isla’s lady’s maid, but really to give the girl a holiday in the countryside.
When Isla casts yet another anxious glance McCreadie’s way, I decide it’s up to me to break this ice, which I do in the most time-honored of road-trip ways.
“Are we there yet?” I say, peering through the dusty window. “It’s so much faster with the bridge.”
That gets McCreadie’s attention. There are people who are good at long, morose silences—such as the guy sitting beside me—but McCreadie fairly leaps on this excuse, his handsome face lightening in a smile.
“Bridge?” he says. “Over the Forth?”
“Yep.”
“How is that even possible?”
“I’m not an engineer,” I say. “But there’s also a railroad bridge that I’m pretty sure gets built in this century.”
“They are starting one next year,” rumbles a voice beside me.
I glance over to see Gray, relaxing with his eyes still shut.
I elbow him. “Tell us more.”
He sighs. “I do not know more. I only heard that they are beginning a suspended bridge for trains.”
I frown. “Are you sure? I don’t think they start construction until near the end of this century.” I pause, thinking hard. “No, they did build another one, but it coll—” I snap my mouth shut. “Never mind.”
Isla’s brows rise. “Are you suggesting that if another bridge is built first, we should not use it?”
“Er, probably not.”
“Well, I for one might be willing to play the odds, if such a thing comes about,” McCreadie says. “Taking the ferry really does make this an interminable trip. Dare I ask how long it would take in your day, Mallory?”
“With bridges and motor cars? An hour to Stirling Castle. So probably two hours to where we’re going.”
Isla sighs. “I was born in the wrong century.”
“What is going on out there?” McCreadie says, opening his window to poke his head through. “I swear we have slowed.”
“See what you have done?” Gray says to me. “A few moments ago, we were all perfectly content with our eight-hour coach ride, and now everyone is complaining.”
“You spent all of yesterday moaning about spending all of today in a coach.”
His eyes narrow. “I mentioned it once.”
“Once at breakfast, once while we were dissecting that liver, once while—”
“I had resigned myself to the journey,” he says. “And now you have spoiled it. Remember whose coach this is. It will be a much longer trip if you walk.”
“Can I walk?” I say. “Please?” I lean toward McCreadie’s open window. “I’m sure I can move faster than this.”
“There does appear to be some sort of slowdown,” McCreadie says, still looking out the window.
“See what you did?” Gray aims a mock glare my way. “You complain about our speed, and the universe takes umbrage.”
“Can you tell what’s going on up there?” I ask McCreadie.
His smile sparks. “No, which means we ought to investigate.”
McCreadie raps on the roof for Simon to stop the carriage. As I gather my skirts, Gray rises and reaches for the door handle.
“Opening the door for us?” McCreadie says. “Very kind, but unnecessary. Stay right there and nap—”
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