Bone Rattler

Bone Rattler 

Bone Rattler by Eliot Pattison, 456 pages

I was interested in this series and wanted to start with the first title. There are 6 books currently in this series, known as the Duncan McCallum series. I found this book a bit too dense for my current attention span, but I really don't think it was the author's fault. I think I just couldn't focus on the mystery as Duncan McCallum worked to solve it.

The events take place on a convict ship to the New World and upon arriving in the New World. Duncan McCallum is being shipped from Scotland to the New World against his will. He is forced into solving a series of murders on the ship and on land and is desperately trying to find the actual culprit; not just pin the murders on any available Scot as his captors suggest.

There were parts of this story I enjoyed quite a bit: descriptions of the French and Indian War, along with McCallum's evolving attitude towards Indians, from abject terror as he considers them all violent at the beginning to slowly coming to respect them as individuals and not savages. A few of the earth-shattering revelations with characters and events I anticipated - I'm not sure if the reader was meant to catch on to these so quickly or if I was a good guesser (I'm usually not so I'm assuming it's the former). And because my focus just wasn't there for this book, I had a difficult time following the thread of the mystery as McCallum spoke to a multitude of characters and made quick conclusions from just one line of dialogue. I'm purposefully choosing a lighter book to follow this one, as I think that's about all I can handle at the moment. I won't write off this entire series and will give the second book, "Eye of the Raven" a chance in the future.