Glendraco

Kirstie Drummond faces an uncertain future and difficult choices – should she marry the insipid Findley against her heart’s desire, or become a hostage to fortune? When she runs away to the Highlands, her strange and striking beauty begins to attract men from miles around. And the Highlanders believe Kirstie’s family has a cursed history. Prompted by their talk, Kirstie sets out to discover the truth about her father’s family, with shocking consequences.

“Laura Black manages a huge constellation of characters with skill and deft touches of humour.” – Publishing Weekly

“Unusually intelligent gothic novel… Black’s first novel is full of real characters, is remarkably readable, and will be a hit with fans of the genre.” – Library Journal

“A darling of a first novel… the characters here are so quirky and varied, and Black’s manner so sprightly and pell-mell, that this adds up to the real thing in romantic adventure.” - Kirkus

The Author: Roger Longrigg was a British author of unusual versatility who wrote both novels and non-fiction, along with plays and screenplays for television, under both his own name and eight other pseudonyms.

Born in Edinburgh into a military family, he was at first schooled in the Middle East, but returned to England as a youth and later read history at Magdalen College, Oxford. His early career took him into advertising, but after the publication of two comic novels took up writing full time in 1959.

He completed fifty five books, many under his own name, but also Scottish historical fiction as Laura Black; thrillers as Ivor Drummond (for which his chief character, Lady Jennifer Norrington was named by HRF Keating in The Times as ‘The true heir of James Bond’); black comedies as Domini Taylor; Frank Parish (which titles feature the adventures of Dan Mallett, a poacher who lives on the edges of legality) - and famously Rosalind Erskine – a name with which he hoaxed all for several years, and who appeared to write a disguised biography of what life was like in a girls boarding school where the classmates ran a brothel for boys from a nearby school. Erskine’s ‘The Passion Flower Hotel' became a bestseller and was later filmed.

Roger Longrigg’s work in television included ‘Mother Love’, a BBC mini-series starring Diana Rigg and David McCallum, and episodes of ‘Crown Court’ and ‘Dial M for Murder’.

He died in 2000, aged 70 and was survived by his wife, the novelist Jane Chichester, and three daughters.