Solomon Farthing is an aging, down at heel
heir hunter in Edinburgh. He owes money he has not got, but a local DI owes him
a favour and gives him a tip off that could save his bacon. Thomas Methven has
just died in a care home; he has no known next of kin and no real estate, but
he does have a fifty thousand pounds sewn into his burial, or rather cremation,
suit. If Solomon can find an heir and agree commission before the funeral, he
will be off the financial hook with cash to spare.
Interspersed with the 2016 heir hunt, a
flashback to November 1918 unfolds involving Solomon’s grandfather, Captain
Godfrey Farthing and his small band of WW1 soldiers holed up in a deserted
farmhouse close to the front line, days before the armistice. One of his men is
Archibald Methven.
As the two stories move forward in parallel,
links between them emerge and resonate down the years, not only the characters
and their families but also in the form of seemingly inconsequential objects.
Valueless in themselves these items – including a pawn ticket, a reel of pink
cotton, a walnut shell, a silver cap badge - become charged with significance
as they are gambled for and traded by the soldiers, then passed down the
generations. Solomon Farthing’s own past is revealed as his investigations
brush up uncomfortably close to his long repressed memories.
The 2016 story has black humour and elements
of farce as Solomon keeps one step ahead of his pursuers; as well as the debt
collectors there is a rival heir hunter and a (not quite) relative whose car
Solomon has purloined. As counterpoint, the 1918 story is necessarily dark with
the men mentally stretched to the limit having endured much and got within days
of relief - provided no order comes to advance once more before the cease fire.
Each element leads to a fine climax after five
hundred pages of pleasing complexity and intrigue.
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