Most of us don't have to go overseas to learn that modern forensics provides a more stable income than English criticism, so we might be forgiven if we're a little jealous of these employer-paid junkets, especially when attendees drop sessions to pursue their personal interests.

Christine has her own psychological issues. She is the only child of a single-mother, an alcoholic pant-chaser whom Christine parented more than she was parented, and with whom she has had only sporadic contact since her late teens. In short, Christine Morris is a motherless child, and a long way from home.

Skilled writer that she is, Jennings makes it appear more than coincidence that Morris is already in Scotland when contacted by Hebridean police. It appears that her mother has gone missing from the scene of a fatal automobile accident on the island of Ellis. Goodbye conference.

Hello Sergeant Gordon Gillies, the quiet, sympathetic, local copper who escorts Christine Morris about the island, providing a sort of Freudian "talking cure" to his damaged charge as they visit the various sites that may or may not have been on her mother's path of destruction the night she disappeared. There's more than enough going on in the investigation, budding romance and travelogue to distract from occasional bits of over-cute Scottish dialect. Then duty calls Gillies’ attention to other chores.

Left on her own, Morris is judgmental and easily manipulated. The climactic image is beautiful in its depiction and symbolism. The book's anti-climactic resolution of other issues is mawkish; tied up so prettily that the package cannot survive the crossing back to Canada for Morris' next adventure. Even the police tape might come unstuck. It seems probable that Morris will face the contents at least once more. With such an unlikely conclusion and an unlikable protagonist, Jennings has charted a risky course, challenging the reader to anticipate she will look into the dark administration of the forensic "sciences" again.