Brief Synopsis of The Laird of Castle Ballantine

 

 

 

In 1964 Leonard McFadden, a brash young London reporter for a national newspaper is dispatched by his editor to the Scottish Borders, to follow up on the strange case of Doctor James Parker; currently in the condemned cell at Drumridge Gaol for the murder of his brother in law.

 

 

 

Leonard is the editor’s golden boy, who always gets results by steaming in regardless, without a thought to the pain, insult or injury he may cause. Needless to say, he ruffles many feathers, making enemies along the way.

 

 

 

After a cold, late night vigil at St. Peters Churchyard, listening to a group of nuns attempting to lay the ghost of Doctor Parker’s sister Rosemary, Leonard returns to the scene.

 

In the early morning sunlight, he sways, laying his hand on a tombstone for support and stumbles onto a mystery that will change his life forever, call his own parentage into question and propel him onto a roller-coaster ride of disaster and death.

 

 

 

An enigmatic churchman, in the graveyard by the River Tweed, asks his name and remarks how Scotsmen from all over the world, often return to their place of birth, just as Salmon return home, to spawn and die. Leonard jokingly replies that he is not yet ready to spawn and die, but these and many more questions go tumbling through his mind as he ponders on life’s mysteries. Is he really who he thinks he is? Growing up in wartime Britain and with a name like McFadden, is it possible he could have Scottish ancestry?

 

 

 

Feeling a chill, and inwardly reflecting that the Scottish Borders, for all its romantic beauty, may well be the death of him, Leonard is unaware that the cold hand of death is lurking just around the corner.

 

 

 

Hot on the trail of his next big story, the reporter unwittingly becomes embroiled in a centuries old dispute between two rival families: the Ballantines and the Ogilvys. Both families have centuries of embittered feuding behind them, going back to the bad old days of the Border

 

Reivers: when bands of lawless marauders would cross the River Tweed on swift horses, to plunder, rape and kill. In this way they created wealth and power and a way of life, still deeply ingrained in their offspring: to plot and scheme and perpetuate the sins of the father.

 

 

 

A gifted psychic medium warns Leonard to beware: dark forces have been unleashed and his life is in danger; the storm clouds of fate are gathering and contriving to play havoc with him.

 

 

During the quest to discover his true ancestry, the young Londoner travels around the country and then on to Germany. He finds evidence of a brother he’s never met and falls heavily for an attractive woman with a dark secret, and even when he discovers her feudal identity he has no other course than to assist her; visiting the Emerald Isle in search of priceless State artifacts from Scotland’s troubled past.