Scottish Thrillers

'A real page-turner' – Ian Rankin A deeply atmospheric psychological thriller set in the Scottish Highlands, The Party House by Lin Anderson is a standalone novel perfect for fans of Lucy Foley and Ruth Ware. From the author of the pulse-pounding Rhona MacLeod series. Devastated by a recent...

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.

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.

This set includes the first two books in the Hamish Macbeth cozy mystery series set in the Scottish Highlands. Death of a Gossip: When society widow and gossip columnist Lady Jane Winters joined the fishing class, she wasted no time in ruffling the feathers—or was it the fins?—of those around her. Death of a Cad: When Priscilla Halburton-Smythe brings her London playwright fiancé home to Lochdubh, everybody in town is delighted…except for love-smitten Constable Hamish Macbeth. Yet his affairs of the heart will have to wait.

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.

In Scotland, where thrift and a "nice set of dentures" are generally admired, dental surgeon Dr. Frederick Gilchrist’s cheap rates and penchant for pulling teeth have gained him a clientele. However, wiser Highlanders (like Hamish Macbeth) opt to steer clear of this reputed womanizer’s all-too-busy hands. A blinding toothache sends Hamish Macbeth 120 miles out of Lochdubh to the infamous dentist’s door. Unfortunately for Hamish and Gilchrist, someone has canceled all the doctor’s appointments - permanently.

When Maud and Daisy receive a letter from Daisy’s cousin, Clara, sharing her fears that two sudden deaths in her local choir weren’t accidental, at first Daisy thinks her cousin is overreacting. But Maud’s detective senses tell her something is afoot, and so they make haste to the Highlands to investigate.

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 need of a good adventure, Delaney Nichols takes the leap and moves to Edinburgh, Scotland, to start a job at The Cracked Spine. She doesn't know much about what she's gotten herself into other than that the work sounds exciting and that her new boss, Edwin MacAlister, has given her the opportunity of a lifetime.

'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...

After the recent death of her mother and the dissolution of her marriage, 30-something Eden Elliott is seriously in need of a fresh start. At the urging of her best friend, best-selling author Ami Pederson, Eden decides to embark on an open-ended trip to the picturesque village of Glenkillen in the Scottish Highlands, to do some hands-on research for a book of her own. But almost as soon as Eden arrives in the quaint town, she gets caught up in a very real drama....

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 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.

Holly Fenwick thought she had left her nightmare behind. Twelve years ago, she narrowly escaped the clutches of a brutal serial killer. Now, while she films a documentary in Eyemouth in the Scottish Borders, to recover from her ordeal and rebuild her life, she spots a figure eerily similar to her former captor. She rushes in, only to find no trace of the man but a chaotic crime scene–and a missing woman.

When silence falls, who will hear their cries? The body of a young girl is found dumped on the roadside on the outskirts of Edinburgh. When pathologists examine the remains, they make a gruesome discovery: the outline of a doll carved into the victim’s skin. DCI Ava Turner and DI Luc Callanach are struggling to find leads in the case until a doll made of skin is found nestled beside an abandoned baby. After another young woman is found butchered, Luc and Ava realise the babydoll killer is playing a horrifying game. And it’s only a matter of time before he strikes again.

In the heart of the Scottish Borders, Gary Hislop is expanding his criminal empire and his lethal grasp is tightening around the area. But as he opens his Kelso hardware store one morning, a sudden attack on him sets off a chain of events that even he couldn't predict. Enter DI Rob Marshall and his team. As Marshall delves into the incident, he finds himself ensnared in a web of deceit, where every alliance is suspect and every door casts a long shadow.

Delaney Nichols has settled so comfortably into her new life in Edinburgh that she truly feels it's become more home than her once beloved Kansas. Her job at the Cracked Spine, a bookshop that specializes in rare manuscripts as well as other sundry valuable historical objects, is everything she had dreamed. Her latest task includes a trip to Castle Doune to retrieve a hard-to-find edition of an old Scottish comic, an "Oor Wullie", in a cloak-and-dagger transaction that Edwin has orchestrated.

Accustomed to the bustle of London, DI Rob Marshall finds himself confronted with the unforgiving Scottish winters he had long left behind. A gruesome discovery off the high road between Stow and Lauder sends shivers down his spine–a man and a woman, both frozen to death with their wrists and ankles bound.

Settling into his new life, Detective Chief Inspector Harry McNeil is being kept busy, but life is going to become a lot busier. The body of an MSP has been found slaughtered in an empty house in Edinburgh. But this is no ordinary crime scene. It’s one that Harry McNeil thinks he’s seen before. Down to the last detail, including the position of the bodies. As they start the hunt, they’re looking for a killer who seems to know far too much detail of what goes on behind the scenes at a kill site. Somebody who doesn’t want to stop.