A Dream of Death

Finished December 26

Dream of Death by Connie Berry

This is the first book in the Kate Hamilton Mysteries series. Kate is an antique dealer who lives in Ohio. She met her late husband at university there where he taught. He was from the Scottish island of Glenroth and Kate has visited a couple of times, but hasn't been back since his death three years ago. Their children are at university and she leads a busy life. 

When her sister-in-law Elenor calls her begging to her come she does, but it doesn't mean that she's comfortable about it. Her visitor coincides with the Tartan Ball, a late fall annual event. She's staying at the hotel that Elenor owned and ran, and where the ball takes place. 

Elenor doesn't fill her in completely about why she's asked her to come, but she has shown Kate a lovely historical casket, and given her a novel about a famous event on the island that a local historian has written, asking her to read it. 

At the ball a couple of announcements that Elenor makes don't go over very well with the locals, and Elenor ends up going back to her apartment in the hotel early. Kate is disturbed the next morning to find that Elenor is dead, and that her death was a copycat murder of one more than two centuries earlier, the woman the novel is about. 

With the local police dismissive of her ideas, Kate follows the clues that she sees through the eyes of someone who is aware of some history, but not a local herself. As she works out who she can trust, she finds herself confiding in the hotel's only other guest, a police investigator from England. 

I liked the historical aspect of the plot, as well as the information around antiques. This is in some ways a woman's story, both now and in the past, and Kate is a good observer. I'd definitely be interested in reading more in the series.