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A Dark Matter (The Skelfs Book 1) by [Doug Johnstone]

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Douglas Johnstone

A Dark Matter (The Skelfs Book 1) Kindle Edition

by Doug Johnstone (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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Book 1 of 4: The Skelfs

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Three generations of women from the Skelfs family take over the family funeral home and PI businesses in the first book of a taut, gripping page-turning and darkly funny new series.

***Shortlisted for the McIlvanney Prize for Best Scottish Crime Book of the Year***
***Shortlisted for the Amazon Publishing Capital Crime Awards***

‘An engrossing and beautifully written tale that bears all the Doug Johnstone hallmarks in its warmth and darkly comic undertones’ Herald Scotland

‘Gripping and blackly humorous’ Observer

‘I was addicted from the first page; gripping, gritty and darkly funny as hell’ Erin Kelly

‘A Dark Matter showcases a writer at the peak of his powers, except that with every book, Doug Johnstone just gets better’ Val McDermid

_________________

Meet the Skelfs: well-known Edinburgh family, proprietors of a long-established funeral-home business, and private investigators…

When patriarch Jim dies, it’s left to his wife Dorothy, daughter Jenny and granddaughter Hannah to take charge of both businesses, kicking off an unexpected series of events.

Dorothy discovers mysterious payments to another woman, suggesting that Jim wasn’t the husband she thought he was. Hannah’s best friend Mel has vanished from university, and the simple adultery case that Jenny takes on leads to something stranger and far darker than any of them could have imagined.

As the women struggle to come to terms with their grief, and the demands of the business threaten to overwhelm them, secrets from the past emerge, which change everything…

A compelling, tense and shocking thriller and a darkly funny and warm portrait of a family in turmoil, A Dark Matter introduces a cast of unforgettable characters, marking the start of an addictive new series.

_________________

‘A fiendish mystery that is also deeply moving and laced with suitably dark humour … set to be one of the books of the year’ Mark Billingham

'Emotionally complex, richly layered and darkly funny. An addictive blend of Case Histories and Six Feet Under’ Chris Brookmyre

‘This dark but touching thriller makes for a thoroughly enjoyable slice of Edinburgh noir’ Mary Paulson-Ellis

‘This enjoyable mystery is also a touching and often funny portrayal of grief, as the three tough but tender main characters pick up the pieces and carry on: more, please’ Guardian

‘A tense ride … strong, believable characters’ Kerry Hudson, Big Issue

‘They are all wonderful characters: flawed, funny, brave — and well set up for a series. I wouldn’t call him cosy, but there’s warmth to Johnstone’s writing’ Sunday Times

Print length

395 pages
Language

English
Publisher

ORENDA BOOKS
Publication date

23 November 2019
File size

5286 KB
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Review

‘Dark, engrossing, impossible to put down. By turns a crime thriller, a family saga, and a page-turner, this book has everything!’ -- Luca Veste

'That rare book with heart and smarts to lift it above your average crime novel’ -- Stuart Neville

‘I can never get enough of Doug Johnstone’s thoughtful, observant, soul-lifting writing’ -- Louise Beech

‘Piercing, wonderfully real and so very readable … a breath of fresh air’ ― LoveReading

‘This is confident, assured characterisation that carries the story brilliantly well and keeps the reader utterly immersed in the interwoven story strands’ ― Live & Deadly

‘A Dark Matter is further proof that Doug Johnstone is as versatile a writer as they come … there’s rhythm and music in his words’ ― From Belgium with Booklove

‘A thriller that begs to be read in one sitting. Highly recommend’ ― The Book Review Café

‘Deliciously chilling, with a wry humour running throughout … toxic, unsettling and just perfect’ ― Random Things through My Letterbox --This text refers to the paperback edition.

About the Author

Doug Johnstone is the author of ten novels, most recently Breakers (2018), which was longlisted for the McIlvanney Prize for Scottish Crime Novel of the Year. Several of his books have been bestsellers and award winners, and his work has been praised by the likes of Val McDermid, Irvine Welsh and Ian Rankin. He's taught creative writing and been writer in residence at various institutions, and has been an arts journalist for twenty years. Doug is a songwriter and musician with five albums and three EPs released, and he plays drums for the Fun Lovin' Crime Writers, a band of crime writers. He's also player-manager of the Scotland Writers Football Club. He lives in Edinburgh. Follow Doug on Twitter @doug_johnstone and visit his website: dougjohnstone.com. --This text refers to the paperback edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07X9X2J4X
Publisher ‏ : ‎ ORENDA BOOKS (23 November 2019)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 5286 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 395 pages

Best Sellers Rank: 46,000 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- 64 in British & Irish Humour & Satire
- 94 in Lawyers & Criminals Humour
- 172 in Dark Humour

Customer Reviews:
794 ratings

About the author

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Douglas Johnstone

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Doug Johnstone is the author of thirteen novels, most recently The Great Silence (2021). His previous book, The Big Chill (2020), was longlisted for the Theakston's Crime Novel of the Year. Several of his books have been bestsellers and three, A Dark Matter (2020), Breakers (2019) and The Jump (2015), were shortlisted for the McIlvanney Prize for Scottish Crime Novel of the Year. He’s taught creative writing and been writer in residence at various institutions over the last two decades including festivals, libraries, universities, schools, prisons and a funeral directors.

Doug is a Royal Literary Fund Consultant Fellow and works as a mentor and manuscript assessor for many organisations, including The Literary Consultancy, Scottish Book Trust and New Writing North. He's been an arts journalist for over twenty years and has also written many short stories and screenplays. He is a songwriter and musician with six albums and three EPs released, and plays drums for the Fun Lovin’ Crime Writers, a band of crime writers. He’s also co-founder of the Scotland Writers Football Club.

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Customer reviews

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3 star		17%
2 star		4%
1 star		3%

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Top reviews from Australia

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Morningdew

A really good read.

Reviewed in Australia on 2 August 2020

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I loved this book. It was well written and a good story. I loved the setting - now in Australia, I grew up near the Braid Burn, and I well remember the daily walk down the Middle Meadow Walk to school in George Square. The author made the Edinburgh scene very vivid, his clear descriptions of the places worked cleverly into the writing. I also loved the way his personal knowledge of physics and and music added depth to the book. It made the character of Hannah, a physics student, more convincing when it could be shown that her studies affected the way she saw the world. The opening I'm not quite sure about, however. I think it may prevent some readers from continuing.

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Holly B.

Depressing and stupid

Reviewed in Australia on 21 January 2022

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So disappointed. Sounded like a great premise but really sorry I spent my time reading this. Preposterous ending and the characters all behaved weirdly. I don't usually leave negative reviews but this was just awful.

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Amazon Customer

Thought provoking - great storyline

Reviewed in Australia on 16 April 2021

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Excellent, thought provoking
Very hard to put down

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A good start for a new series but needs a bit of tweaking.

Reviewed in Australia on 5 July 2020

I have to admit, I was a little bit conflicted about this book.

This was the story about 3 generations of strong Skelf women. Dorothy, the matriarch who discovers that her recently deceased husband was keeping secrets from her; Jenny the daughter who is forced to return home to help run the family funeral business and finds herself in all sorts of hot water on several fronts and Hannah, who is a physics nerd and whose best friend goes missing. Naturally, Jenny and Hannah investigate this by themselves because, as you do, the Skelfs also have a private investigation business on the side.

I found this story a little confusing at the beginning, and not with as much depth as I would have liked. It built up to being quite intense towards the end and the thriller aspect of it came out. Overall, I thought it was a good book but I would have liked to have got a better sense about Dorothy and her drumming and Hannah with her studies. Hopefully, all will be revealed in future books!

3.5 rounded up to 4.

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sarah bourne

I tried to love this book!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 30 November 2019

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I really tried to love this book. It has an interesting premise, an unusual setting (an undertaker's), and I like strong female characters. The trouble with this book was that I found the book quite slow and repetitive, the author wanting us to know how much he knows about particle physics, music, bodies, etc, and these passages took me out of the story. I also found the characters to be unbelievable - I know it's fiction, but as a reader I need to be taken along on their journey and understand why they act as they do, and I just didn't feel that in this book. Sorry.

17 people found this helpful

Paris

A tremendous find

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 6 February 2020

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I found this via a reviewin The Guardian and saw it was praised by Val McDermid and Ian Rankin, so it had big shoes to fill. It did so and then some; I thoroughly enjoyed this slightly quirky take on crime/investigation and I am delighted to find that Doug Johnstone has a back catalogue for me to work through, can only hope his earlier books are of the same standard.
The characters were so well drawn, different threads worked in so that they appeared seamless. The standard of writing was excellent, as a pet hate for me is clunky dialogue, together with any need to explain events. I think good writing is that where the plot flows without such a need and this was very much of that quality. I found it hard to put this book down and I love finding this in any novel. Although I enjoyed this as a stand alone book, I do hope it is the start of a series; these characters are too good to be left here!
I read a little about the author and discovered such an interesting background, physics and music; who knew ? Loved how it came together here. Hope this does not sound worthy, but not all men writing about women can do as good a job as DJ. Their characters rang true and I agree with the lovely policeman who said the Skelf women were strong; more power to their elbows!

12 people found this helpful

Read and Reviewed

Muted execution of an oiginal set-up with three generations of one family tackling death & crime.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 28 February 2020

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A Dark Matter introduces the Skelf family and three generations of women whose surname is synonymous with death in the city of Edinburgh. With the family home having doubled as a funeral parlour for the last century and a private investigators for the last decade, wife, daughter and granddaughter are laying patriarch, Jim, to rest in a contrary cremation he explicitly requested. But business must go on even with the man at the helm gone, with seventy-year-old widow, Dorothy, divorced adult daughter, Jenny, and twenty-year-old physics student and granddaughter, Hannah, forced to compartmentalise their own grief. A tough ask when there is literally no escape from mortality as they enable other families to process their own personal grief and nigh on impossible when dark secrets from the past emerge and threaten everything they hold dear.

As Californian native and compassionate yoga loving widow, Dorothy, takes charge of the funeral side of the business and discovers mysterious monthly payments for the last decade she is devastated to realise that the man she shared everything with lied to her. Forced to question her marriage to Jim and determined to get to the bottom of his duplicity, tenacious Dorothy vows to discover the truth. As bitter and broke middle-aged divorcée, Jenny, comes to terms with being unemployed and moving back home the relatively straightforward sounding adultery case she picks up soon becomes far more complex than simply sitting in the van and tailing her target. Meanwhile overearnest student, Hannah, is hit by a fresh tragedy as her best friend from university, Mel, vanishes. Mired in their own grief and without any option but to go on, all three women are about to be tested to their limit as three investigations are set in motion, alongside a backdrop of funeral proceedings.

The premise and the whole set-up of A Dark Matter is something to savour and my disappointment was that the novel proved to be far less exciting than it promised, with sleuthing more akin to the blundering of cosy crime novels. Dorothy’s detective friend, Thomas Olsson, is also on hand to conveniently run DNA tests and interview people willy-nilly making much of what unfolds highly improbable. In this sense apart from some well-placed gallows humour (from Jenny especially) and Johnstone’s realistic attitude to the business of death, the investigations of all three women owe more to a cheesy crime caper. It is only thanks to the plot being so busy that the novel holds the attention as it moves sequentially though each of the trio of women’s individual perspectives and nudges each of their cases onwards ahead of a lively denouement.

The narrative throughout leans heavily towards the politically correct with middle-aged white men getting a bad press for starters. Whilst this does not detract from the novel it feels unnecessarily heavy-handed, likewise the constant referencing back to the physics of matter obviously intended to illustrate that we are bit part players in the wider scheme of things. Dorothy was the strongest of the three protagonists to my mind and a character that I empathised with but dissatisfied Jenny and dull Hannah failed to make a significant impression on me.

Whilst I hope to read more of the Skelf women’s juggling death and private investigation whilst also managing their own life dramas, I am hoping that future outings will be both darker and their unconventional methods of detection will become more credible! With all three generations learning something about themselves in the aftermath of Jim’s death the next instalment has the potential to build on solid series opener and expand on their characterisation.

7 people found this helpful

Jacob Collins

Original and fantastic writing!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 28 January 2020

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Doug Johnstone is fast becoming one of my favourite writers. His previous book, Breakers, was one of my top reads of 2019 and he has pulled it off again with A Dark Matter.

I think this book has one of the most original openings I’ve read in a long while. I did have to go over the first two sentences a couple of times as it dawned on me what was happening. Doug Johnstone pulls you into his story with a somewhat disturbing opening as a corpse is being fried. This opening scene grabbed my attention, and I wanted to know what the hell was going on here. But the opening scene isn’t quite as sinister as you might think; there are a lot more sinister scenes to come.

In Doug’s last book, I loved the raw, authentic voice he gave to his characters. In this book, we meet a family who own a funeral home, the Skelfs, which also operates as a private detective agency. I really liked this idea. It did give the book a Miss Marple and an Inspector Poirot kind of feeling.

Hannah, who is the granddaughter of Dorothy, who now solely owns the business after the death of her husband, Jim, is distraught when her friend Mel disappears. She begins investigating Mel’s disappearance on her own and takes matters into her own hands when it appears that the police show little interest. Hannah is tough and is absolutely determined to find out what has happened to her Mel. But meanwhile, another mystery is taking up her mother’s time. Hannah’s mother, Jenny, has found out that the business is still paying money to the wife of a former employee who also strangely disappeared. She can’t understand why the business is still paying this money and begins to suspect that her father, Jim, may have had a hand in his disappearance. Did he reach an agreement with his former employee’s wife to keep her silent on the matter?

I did think that A Dark Matter didn’t have the same, quite high level of tension as Breakers did, but I did become utterly immersed in the story. It is quite a different book, and it does stand out, it’s hard to place it into just one genre. Doug really captures Hannah’s anger as she searches for answers behind Mel’s disappearance, and also in Jenny’s despair, as she tries to work out what has been going on behind her back within the business. Doug Johnstone has a real talent for giving his characters strong, emotional depth which really brings them to life and makes them feel like real people.

You will be rooting for the characters to reach the answers that they are desperately craving. A Dark Matter is a totally original novel that will have you begging for the next chapter in the series. Fantastic writing!

5 people found this helpful

Mrs Graham

Perfection!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 16 February 2021

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This book is so good its my first 5 star rating of the year! It follows the story of the Skelf family who run a funeral parlour with a private investigation business on the side in Edinburgh. When the man of the house Jim dies he leaves his wife, daughter and granddaughter in a world of secrets and lies as they wrestle with their own grief and the murky business they've now been left to manage.
The book is extremely well written and the plot is excellent. All the characters are relatable and I felt myself genuinely loving or raging at people in the story as I was so immersed in it. I heard about the book in a list of Scottish fiction by The Scottish Book Trust and I'm so glad I decided to pick it up. I've already started the second book The Big Chill and I'll be preordering the third book when its available as its out in August!!
Pick it up you won't regret it :)

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Douglas Johnstone

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