By Jody Gerbig

In The Wolf Tree, filmmaker and debut mystery writer Lauren McClusky investigates what happens to a culture left to its own rules. 

Inspired by a real lighthouse mystery, this is a gothic suspense solidly in the tradition of Shirley Jackson and Tana French. McClusky’s debut novel will keep you up at night, even when you aren’t turning pages.

Back in the early 1900s, three lighthouse keepers disappeared on Eilean Eadar, a remote, storm-swept island that is part of the Outer Hebrides. The mystery was never solved, and it’s been more than a decade since a police officer has set foot on the island.

The death of a local, found at the foot of the island’s lighthouse, brings two Glasgow detectives to Eilean Eadar to figure out what happened. Did the young man die by suicide or under suspicious circumstances?

The novel opens with Inspector George Lennox battling vicious rain, waves, and wind as the boat arrives at the isolated island.

“A woman standing in ankle-deep water on a pitching boat was the first image I had when thinking about this story—before I even knew who she was, where she was going, or why—so I wrote that image down,” says McCluskey.

Her grandfather was born and raised in Glasgow, Scotland, and her childhood was filled with stories about growing up there, one of which inspired part of the mystery of Eilean Eadar. “I came across the story about the missing Eileen Mor lighthouse keepers, and something about that mystery—maybe that I would never know the answer—hooked me. I couldn’t stop thinking about why they might have disappeared and where they went, so I wrote a story around that unknown to answer it myself.”

The atrocious weather and lack of cell or internet service are not the only challenges that stand in the detectives’ way. From the wolf-masked person outside their windows at night to the curse laid just outside their front door, the island’s insular and suspicious inhabitants seem to want the detectives to go home and take their modern values with them.

It’s a well-known axiom among writers that the first page sells the current book, and the last page sells the next one. So it’s not a surprise that at the end of The Wolf Tree, readers are left with some unanswered questions about the characters and their journeys. Don’t fear though—McCluskey is on the case.

She says, “In the new book, we pick back up with George and Richie, and they will continue to evolve. But the new book is not a direct sequel. Some time has passed, and George and Richie investigate a new case. This time in the remote Highlands. It will be accessible to new readers, but with enough hints of their past to entice anyone to go back and read The Wolf Tree. Creating that balance has been a lot of fun.”