Title:

The Wolf Tree

Author:

Laura McCluskey

Category:

Mystery / Thriller

Rating:

Date Reviewed:

December 12, 2025

ookpage placed The Wolf Tree on its list of best 2025 mysteries, and gave it a starred review, so it sounded intriguing to me. However, I was not over-awed by the characters or the plot. It is intended to be an atmospheric novel of suspense, but George's constant prickly sensation that someone is watching her did not translate into suspense for me. There are midnight wolf howlings that only she seems to hear. The islanders all silently glare at her with angry, suspicious stares. Although McCluskey tried hard to ratchet up the tension in this novel, it didn't result in a frenzy of page-turning by me to find out what happens next. A lot happens at the end of the novel, so I stayed up late to finish The Wolf Tree, but it seemed to me that everything was solved by people suddenly confessing, rather than great detective work on George's part.

The Wolf Tree is the story of Detective Inspectors Georgina "George" Lennox and Richie Stewart assigned to investigate the suicide of eighteen year old Alan Ferguson. Alan was found at the foot of the lighthouse on the remote (fictional) Scottish island of Eilean Eadar, a small lonely chunk of land surrounded by the violent North Atlantic. The police autopsy highlighted some injuries and bruises that don't seem consistent with a fall from a lighthouse. George and Richie sail out to the remote island, which is populate by a couple hundred resilient souls. However, although Father Ross, the Catholic priest and Kathy the postmistress are friendly enough, most of the islanders are obviously hostile. Mainlanders are not welcomed to intrude on their insular community.

George and Richie interview some of the inhabitants, most of whom are reluctant to talk, and make their displeasure known. The islanders are a superstitious lot, possessing medieval beliefs despite many of them having visited the mainland. There are spiral symbols carved above every doorway lintel for luck. A twisted figure made of straw and wrapped with rotten eggs is placed above the croft door in an attempt to create a curse. On one of her walks to the lighthouse, George encounters John MacNeil who warns her to stay out of the small woods because of the fey folk ("...and don't call them fairies, they don't like it!"), George attempts to stop a group of drunken islanders from to sacrificing a sheep to pacify the rain goddess Gentle Annie when a major storm is predicted. Women with red hair are not allowed anywhere near the fishing boats. This superstitious behavior is meant to evoke a sense of dread and medieval confinement, but mostly it left me impatient with their silly beliefs. I had hard time imaging 21st century Scots thinking like this.

This seemingly straight-forward investigation is George's first since she has been returned to the field after a terrible accident. George suffers from pounding headaches plus an inability to concentrate or sleep due to a fall she took when trying to apprehend a criminal. She was pushed out a window and struck her head. Now she must take two types of powerful pills to calm the pounding headaches or to sleep. George is afraid that if her partner Richie discovers how much she needs these medicines to function, that he will report her, and George will be removed from active investigations and assigned a desk job. Perhaps McCluskey added George's use of these drugs to add uncertainty regarding George's sanity. After all, Richie never hears the wolf howling at night.

It looks like The Wolf Tree is intended to be the first book in a series, but I am not interested enough to pursue these characters on further adventures.