Death at the Highland Loch by Lydia Travers Narrator: Sarah Barron
Series: Lady Poppy Proudfoot #1
Published by Bookouture Audio on May 19, 2025
Source: NetGalley
Genres: Cozy Mystery, Historical Mystery
Length: 9 hrs 21 mins
Pages: 318
Format: Audiobook
Purchase at Bookshop.org or Audible
Add on Goodreads
Move over, Inspector! Lady Poppy Proudfoot is here to solve her very first case.
Scotland, 1924: When Lady Poppy Proudfoot travels to the Highlands for a midsummer party, the last thing she and her fellow guests expect is for a body to wash up beside the loch.
Despite protests that it could have been an accident, Poppy is convinced it’s murder and decides to dust off her law degree and hunt for clues. But when the police arrive, the grumpy Inspector MacKenzie dismisses her evidence, insisting a crime scene is no place for a Lady. The nerve!
With the help of her trusted Labrador, Major, Poppy begins to unpick the case. But she soon has two mysteries to solve, as her host Lady Constance Balfour claims a diamond and emerald bracelet has been stolen. Could the two cases be linked? Was it Freddy the footman, a favourite of her ladyship? Or American actress Miss Cornett, with a keen eye for jewels? Or with such a dazzling guestlist, was someone from the local village tempted into the grounds by the party?
When a woman bearing an uncanny resemblance to Poppy is attacked, she realizes that someone wants her off the case. Someone connected to Balfour House is a murderer and a thief, but who? And can Poppy solve the mystery before she, too, washes up beside the loch?
Death at the Highland Loch is an enjoyable, typical historical cozy. Our sleuth is Poppy Proudfoot, a young, well off widow whose parents are in Australia. So she has the money and freedom to more or less do what she wants. She’s pretty, smart (she has a law degree), and has the requisite dog, an adorable lab named Major.
In this first outing, she has two cases she’s working on. Her friend, Lady Constance Balfour, wants her to find out what happened to an bracelet that her husband apparently purchased shortly before his death. And then there’s the murdered man down by the lock. Granted Inspector MacKenzie has told her to stay away from the murder investigation, but at least he seems to have a sense of humor about her interference. If nothing else, Poppy is sure of her own competence.
I listened to the audiobook and the narrator did a good job dealing with the large cast and variety of accents. I love the Scottish setting and the historical tidbits were thrown in nicely. There just wasn’t anything that really made it stand out for me.
About Lydia Travers
Lydia Travers was born in London. She moved progressively north until settling with her husband in a village on the edge of the Scottish Highlands. She has raised children, bred dogs and kept chickens; and for as long as she can remember has written for pleasure. A former legal academic and practitioner with a PhD in criminology, she now runs self-catering holiday accommodation, sings in a local choir and is walked daily by the family dog.
Lydia also writes as Linda Tyler and her first novel under that name, Revenge of the Spanish Princess, won a 2018 Romance Writers of America competition for the beginning of an historical romance. Her second novel The Laird’s Secret was Commended in the 2021 Scottish Association of Writers’ Pitlochry Quaich competition for the beginning of a romantic novel. The Scottish Ladies’ Detective Agency won the 2022 Scottish Association of Writers’ Constable Silver Stag trophy. She has had a number of short stories published in magazines, journals and anthologies in the UK, the USA and Australia.
Reading this book contributed to these challenges: