Scottish Mysteries Thrillers

A simple case of a missing sister. Or is it? When Ian Skair is invited to an ancient castle perched on a rocky promontory of the Angus coast, he expects to find a routine missing person case. Little does he know, the Laird of Drumlychtoun and his family have more secrets and black sheep than Ian could have ever anticipated. As Ian uncovers secrets and intrigues, thefts and legends, he finds himself and the family in a dangerous situation. Can he reunite the laird with his sister and discover the truth behind her disappearance? Or will the family's secrets be too much for them to handle?

Tormented by the recent loss of a colleague, DCI Jack Logan is on the warpath, determined to bring down all those he holds responsible for the officer's death. His quest for revenge is cut short when a woman's body turns up on the remote island of Canna, and Jack is summoned to investigate. As a storm closes in, Jack finds himself cut-off from the rest of the world, with no car, no phone signal, and only DC Neish for company,

From the dramatic Highlands to bustling cities, the unique landscapes and locales of Scotland have enthralled and shaped generations of mystery writers. This new collection presents 17 classic stories, spanning a period from the 1880s to the 1970s, by a host of Scottish authors alongside writers from south of the border inspired by the history and majesty of the storied country.

It's early September in Glenkillen, Scotland, when American expat (and romance novelist) Eden Elliott is recruited by the local inspector to act as a special constable. Fortunately it's in name only, since not much happens in Glenkillen. For now Eden has her hands full with other things: preparing for the sheepdog trial on the MacBride farm, a fundraiser for the hospice, and helping her friend Vicki with her first yarn club skein-of-the-month deliveries. Everything seems to be going well until the head of the welcoming committee is found strangled to death with a club member's yarn.

After years working as detective, Sergeant Rakesh Siyal is back in uniform and facing the hard realities of Edinburgh’s streets. With a missing teenager sucking away manpower, his frontline team have to contend with a pub fight in danger of spiralling out of control and turning into something far more dangerous.

When detectives John Stone and Carmen Dehan who run the Cold Cases Department at the 43rd Precinct in the Bronx choose their honeymoon together, there are three things they are very clear on: there must be good steak and whisky, it must be remote, and for two blissful weeks they must forget about work, about cold cases and about murder.

Amira’s less than thrilled to be spending the weekend with her husband’s university friends. Two of them are hosting a joint fortieth on a private Scottish island, with vintage champagne, expensive gifts, and soaks in the wood-fired hot tub. Despite the luxury, Amira knows she’s going to feel left out, not to mention freezing cold and cut off. When they decide to play ‘two truths and a lie’, anonymously posting three statements about themselves into a box, years of resentment start bubbling to the surface. And then an extra slip of paper emerges, scrawled with three chilling threats

In The Lewis Man, the second book of the trilogy, Fin Macleod has returned to the Isle of Lewis, the storm-tossed, wind-scoured outer Hebridean island where he was born and raised. Having left behind his adult life in Edinburgh - including his wife and his career in the police force - the former Detective Inspector is intent on repairing past relationships and restoring his parents' derelict cottage. His plans are interrupted when an unidentified corpse is recovered from a Lewis peat bog. The only clue to its identity is a DNA match to a local farmer, the now-senile Tormod Macdonald....

The most hated man in the most dour town in Scotland is sleeping with the fishes, or more accurately, has been dumped into a tank filled with crustaceans. All that remains of the murdered victim are his bones. But once the lobsters have been shipped off to Britain's best restaurants, the whole affair quickly lands on the plate of Constable Hamish Macbeth.

When a sadistic killer begins picking off victims on the streets of Inverness, Jack’s boss decides to bring in some outside help. But the new team member is an old flame from Jack’s past who isn’t quite ready to let him go. And as the dead bodies rack up, the happily ever after that Jack has been building for himself might just be the next victim to fall....

Having left the Highlands murder team behind and joined the shadowy world of the secret services, former DC Kirsten Stewart overhears a plot that strikes to the very core of Scotland's governance. As the stakes get higher and Kirsten becomes cut off from her superiors, can she stop the assassin before they eliminate their prime target. In her first solo mission, Kirsten Stewart finds herself in deep shadow and in receipt of disturbing news. Only by remaining incommunicado can she find out the intentions of a killer and stop the murder of Scotland's top politician.

How long would you wait to take revenge? 'Now,’ Granny said quietly. ‘We shall hold hands in the dark. Then we will know we aren’t on our own.’ When Sergeant Sam Sharpe of the Virginia P.D. contacts Dani Bevan about the murder of one of his officers, the Glasgow DCI doesn’t see how she can help. But as Sam explains further, Dani finds herself entangled in a case which transports her team back to the murky world of the industrial conflicts of the 1970s. Hold Hands in the Dark is the seventh novel in the DCI Dani Bevan series of police procedurals.

Just when he thought he was out.... Burdened by guilt over the trauma recently inflicted on his friends and colleagues, former-Detective Chief Inspector Jack Logan has spent the past nine months living in self-imposed exile. When a mother and her young daughter are the victims of a double murder staged to look like suicide, Logan is dragged back to help hunt down and catch a brutal, calculating killer. But the world has moved on without him.

After Culloden, Iain MacGillivray was left for dead on Drumossie Moor. Wounded, his face brutally slashed, he survived only by pretending to be dead as the Redcoats patrolled the corpses of his Jacobite comrades. Six years later, with the clan chiefs routed and the Highlands subsumed into the British state, Iain lives a quiet life, working as a bookseller in Inverness. One day, after helping several of his regular customers, he notices a stranger lurking in the upper gallery of his shop, poring over his collection. But the man refuses to say what he's searching for.

Sergeant Hamish Macbeth is worried about how the folks will react to his new assistant officer; the enigmatic American James Bland, whose true mission is to track down the members of a Russian spy network. In the meantime, he and Bland deal with it the usual crop of traffic incidents, lost wallets, lost dogs, and lost people, but a spate of burglaries committed by a man dubbed “Spiderman” give Hamish cause for serious concern.

In the shadow of the Pentland Hills, a man has been callously struck down in front of his home. Tyre marks suggest it was no accidental hit-and-run. Somebody wanted him dead and as the man fights for every breath, they might still get their wish. Grappling with the demons he thought he could leave behind after months away on enforced leave, D.S. Malkie McCulloch resists pressure from his superiors to pass the case on to the road policing unit, convinced that whoever was behind the wheel will be waiting for the chance to finish the job.

It’s not going well for NE Division: half the force is off sick, all leave’s been cancelled, someone’s firebombed a migrant hostel and there’s a massive climate change protest march happening this Saturday. With officers dropping like flies, Detective Inspector Logan McRae has to kick off a major murder investigation with a skeleton staff of misfits, idiots and malingerers – AKA: DS Steel’s team – until the top brass can arrange backup from other divisions.

The Isle of Ghiant has had no permanent inhabitants since the early 1960s, so when a fisherman discovers the freshly dumped body of a woman there, the case baffles the detective in charge. The body is identified as that of a high-ranking ex-cop. The pressure to solve the case intensifies. DCI Dani Bevan knew the victim. DI Juliet Lowther was her first boss as a young detective, starting out her career in Glasgow. The case requires Dani to re-evaluate her past, as a catalogue of shocking secrets emerge that will change the way she views everything that went before. The Dark Isle is the tenth...

When a morning jogger discovers a dead body on the outskirts of Cullenbrae, a remote hamlet deep in the heart of the Campsie Fells, DCI Bone and his team are called out to what appears to be a straightforward hit and run incident. But the victim’s horrific injuries and a murder weapon found at the scene suggest a far more sinister motive.

When the body of a teenager is discovered near Eilean Donan Castle several months after she disappeared, DCI Jack Logan and his team journey across the Highlands to investigate. As they start to unpick the young woman’s life, the secrets and lies they expose soon threaten to tear the small rural community apart. But when a second girl goes missing in similar circumstances, it isn’t just a murder investigation that Jack finds himself running. It’s a race against time.