Scottish Crime

The new installment in the “relentlessly engrossing series” (The Wall Street Journal) finds Karen Pirie and her team investigating the murder of a journalist paved under a motorway—but was it his work or his private life that put him there? Scotland, 2025. When torrential winter rain...

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....

Over a year as a Detective Inspector during the worst time in living memory, Vicky Dodds is finally getting some balance into her life. A happy family and an engagement. But when Vicky is called out to a Dundee flat, she finds a dead body, his skull smashed in by a hammer. As she investigates, Vicky is given assistance by someone from a recent case, DS Luke Shepherd of Edinburgh’s Major Investigation Team.

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.

Opening her shop Cashmere Crush and making a new home for herself, her son Brody, Gramps, and their black Scottish terrier Wallace in the beautiful Scottish village of Nairn, is a dream come true. So Paislee is happy to give back by donating a luxurious cashmere sweater for an auction to raise money for the Nairn Food Bank. She's less happy to make the acquaintance of a clique of competitive moms at the charity event, who treat a baking contest like it's life or death. It turns out to be the latter for queen bee Kirsten Buchanan.

With the lovely Priscilla Halburton-Smythe away in London, Hamish Macbeth, the constable of the small Scottish town of Lochdubh, pines for company during the long Scottish winter. He gets his wish - and more - when a troupe of flashy, urbane filmmakers clamors into the nearby town of Drim. Before long bedlam erupts around their make-believe mystery - and culminates in the sudden appearance of one very real corpse.

Covering the Ice Age to the recent Scottish Referendum, the acclaimed historian and author explores the history of the Scottish nation. Focusing on key moments such as the Battle of Bannockburn and the Jacobite risings, Moffat also features other episodes in history that are perhaps less well documented. From prehistoric timber halls to inventions and literature, Moffat's epic explores the drama of battle, change, loss, and innovation interspersed with the lives of ordinary Scottish folk, the men and women who defined a nation.

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.

Ten years ago, Marshall profiled a serial killer the press had dubbed the Shadow Man, who killed six young athletes at remote sites in cold blood, and he worked with Northumbria Police to catch the perpetrator. But the Shadow Man kept the burial locations of the final three bodies to himself. Tired of the passivity, Marshall quit profiling and joined the police. Now a detective inspector in Police Scotland’s Borders Major Investigation Team, Marshall is summoned to HMP Frankland in County Durham, a.k.a. the Monster Mansion.

It's a quiet, snowy morning at The Cracked Spine bookshop when book seller Delaney Nichols receives a mysterious visitor, a messenger. He presents her with a perplexing note: an invitation to a meeting with eccentric socialite Shelagh O'Conner, who requests Delaney's participation in an exclusive treasure hunt.

Scotland, 1924: When Lady Poppy Proudfoot is invited to her friend’s hotel on the Isle of Skye, she is looking forward to a holiday. But all thoughts of relaxing vanish when she discovers the body of a strangled woman in a church. The police believe the widow’s death was a robbery gone wrong, as a pendant was stolen from the scene. But Poppy is sure it’s murder. Ignoring the police’s warnings to keep her nose out, she enlists her friend Inspector MacKenzie, and her loyal Labrador, Major, to unpick the case.

A lawyer is found dead at sunrise on a lonely clifftop at Dunnet Head on the northernmost tip of Scotland. It was supposed to be his honeymoon, but now his wife will never see him again. The case is linked to several mysterious deaths, including the murder of the lawyer’s last client—Scotland’s most notorious criminal...who had just walked free. DS Max Craigie knows this can only mean one thing: they have a vigilante serial killer on their hands.

Paislee's custom sweater and yarn business, Cashmere Crush, is the sole support for not only the single mum and her 10-year-old son, Brody, but also her eccentric Gramps and Wallace, their black Scottish terrier. So when her landlord, Shawn Marcus, serves her an eviction notice and then pulls a disappearing act, she'll go to any lengths to find the man and reason with him.

'One of the most satisfying characters in modern crime fiction' – Daily Mail An ancient grave. A modern evil. The Dead and the Dying is a pulse-pounding instalment in the Rhona MacLeod series, perfect for fans of Ian Rankin, Martina Cole and Silent Witness. In the dim morning light, Orkney’s...

'This novel stands successfully on its own, its characters fleshed out and in full possession of their idiosyncrasies — all magnificently conveyed by narrator Steve Worsley...He captures perfectly the novel’s dark wit and the region’s pugnacity, bringing a sense of festivity to the police...

In Clan MacKenzie, we fight for each other. We die for each other. And when I fell for Chevelle, those same rules applied to her. She loves me, but hates the family business. So, I hid the villain in me until today. Today, I need to do what must be done and that requires the help of the same people she would rather us keep our distance from.

When the body of a local talent show winner is discovered, on the eve of headlining Kilwinnoch’s annual Civic Week celebrations, it throws the festivities into chaos and threatens to tear the close-knit community apart. For DCI Bone, the death is personal. Days earlier, he’d received a call from the victim, warning that she was about to be killed. He’d dismissed it as a hoax.

Stephen Berry is about to jump off a bridge until a suicide prevention counsellor stops him. A week later, Stephen is dead. Found at the bottom of a cliff, DI Luc Callanach and DCI Ava Turner are drafted in to investigate whether he jumped or whether he was pushed.... As they dig deeper, more would-be suicides roll in: a woman found dead in a bath; a man violently electrocuted. But these are carefully curated deaths – nothing like the impulsive suicide attempts they’ve been made out to be.

In search of a new life, 16-year-old Adriana Clark’s family moves to the ancient ocean-battered Isle of Mull, far off the coast of Scotland. Then she goes missing. Faced with hostile locals and indifferent police, her desperate parents turn to private investigator Sadie Levesque. Sadie is the best at what she does. But when she finds Adriana’s body in a cliffside cave, a seaweed crown carefully arranged on her head, she knows she’s dealing with something she’s never encountered before.

The Organization has dispatched Ishmael and his partner Penny to Coronach House on the shores of Loch Ness, where the secretive but highly influential Baphamet Group are holding their annual meeting. The Organization believes an imposter has infiltrated the Group, and they have instructed Ishmael to root him - or her - out. It's not Ishmael's only mission. The first agent sent by the Organization has been found dead in her room, murdered in a horribly gruesome manner. Ishmael must also discover who killed Jennifer Rifkin, his fellow agent - and why.