Loch Down Abbey by Beth Cowan-Erskine

 

The tradition of narrative where masters appear as ignorant, narrow-minded and utterly useless is not a new one - from Pierre Beaumarchais' The Mad Day or The Marriage of Figaro to P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster series, from Carlo Goldoni's The Servant of Two Masters to The Help by Kathryn Stockett, and many more. 

Servants in books and plays are often more intelligent, quick-witted, caring and congenial than their masters. They are also usually pretty realistic about their "betters", and while they stay deferential, they cannot help but judge their masters.

The similar premises get going in Loch Down Abbey by Beth Cowan-Erskine. 

Loch Down Abbey is not so much a historical fiction, as a parody of historical fiction, a pastiche of the cosy mystery of the 1920-30s, with the added elements of the trendsetting pandemic sub-genre.

The story takes place in the 1930s in Loch Down Abbey, a fictional grand house on the shores of Loch Down, deep in the Scottish Highlands.

A mysterious illness is spreading throught the kingdom, it is highly contagious and hundreds have already died, but the Inverkillen family are far from concerned.

Lord Inverkillen, Earl and head of the family, is found dead in mysterious circumstances, supposedly fishing for salmon. The local bumpkin policeman pronounces it an accident. "Inspector Jarvis was not a busy man and he liked it that way. He was in charge of the Loch Down Police Force... " It's more convenient for the family and him to announce the official ruling as Death by Misadventure.

The head housekeeper Mrs MacBain isn't convinced. She believes the Earl's death is far from accidental, and there is a plethora of suspects. Due to the pandemic, the house is in lockdown, nobody is allowed in or out. All suspects, both the family and servants, have good reasons to get rid of the Earl.

The Earl's family is preoccupied with keeping the inheritance. Nobody mourns the death of the head of the family. 

Mrs MacBain has been running the Abbey for nearly fifteen years, and "there was nothing in the household she did not know about and she ran it like an Admiral of the Fleet". Despite having her hands full due to the shortage of staff, she decides to run her own investigation, uncovering a whole lot of unpalatable secrets and lies.

"Alice MacBain was well aware that she was a supremely competent woman. If she had been born a man, she would have been a head butler"

There are a few allusions to Downton Abbey, not just the wordplay on the title, for example, the family dogs are named Grantham and Belgravia. The matriarch of the family is based on the character of Dowager Countess, the same bossy sharp-tongued dame.

Even before I've found out that the author is an American expat, I guessed it. The relationship between the masters and servants sounds conjured up in the imagination rather than based on reality and is bordering on caricature. Some of the scenes sound utterly far-fetched, like the fight during the auction.

I also found the pandemic setting used for the comic effect as slightly flippant and insensitive. The parallels with the current pandemic, deaths, masks, isolation are a bit too close for comfort to be taken as a source of amusement. 

Loch Down Abbey is an easy and entertaining read, if it were a piece of music, it would be a vaudeville.

Disclosure: My thanks to Beth Cowan-Erskine and NetGalley for the ARC.

Author Bio:

"Beth Cowan Erskine is an American expat who married into a mad Scottish family with their own tartan and family tree older than her home country. Using them as inspiration, she wrote her first novel during the coronavirus lockdown, hoping it would be enough to get her dis-invited from the annual family walking holiday. Sadly, it backfired and led to long discussions of who will play who in the film. When not writing features for The American Magazine, she owns an interior architecture and design studio in the Cotswolds."