Scottish Thrillers

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.

When Delaney wins a special Hidden Door Festival invitation to artist Ryory Bennigan's studio, she isn't sure quite what to expect. What she finds is an elusive fellow obsessed with the Picts—complete with his own versions of their blue tattoos and vibrant red hair—recreating the stones they left behind. She also meets a visiting paleontologist, Dr. Adam Pace, from the University of Kansas attempting to sell an artifact that might just explain what the Picts' language really sounded like.

Have you ever wished someone dead? Because Scarlett Scott really wouldn’t recommend it… Moving to a small town in the Scottish Highlands isn’t quite what journalist Scarlett expected it to be. And when local influencer Ava Valentine goes missing, things start to get even more complicated; especially when the dour new village policeman gets involved and instantly becomes Scarlett’s arch nemesis. For Scarlett and Dylan, it’s hate at first sight. But can they work together to find Ada? And can enemies ever really become friends…

Edinburgh, Scotland. March 1832. Kiera and Gage have been eagerly awaiting their bundle of joy but trouble has been brewing in the form of the roguish criminal Bonnie Brock Kincaid. A new book and subsequent play features some of Kincaid's daringly heinous exploits, although he swears he had nothing to do with it or the characters which are obvious representations of Kiera and Gage. A rash of crimes break out across the city, seemingly inspired by the play and book. Then the publisher is found brutally murdered.

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.

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.

Hogmanay. New Year's Eve. A dead teenager, another missing. One hell of a case. Meet DS Vicky Dodds. Settling down for a nice Hogmanay with her daughter and her best friend, a phone call pulls DS Vicky Dodds into work and to a deadly new case. A teenage girl, her body cooling in a cold, dark supermarket car park. Found next to her friend’s car, but the driver’s missing too — has the killer taken her? Or is she the killer?

The disappearance of a Dundee-based dog breeder sets DS Vicky Dodds and her team on a desperate hunt through the city and the surrounding Tayside. But soon other crimes are committed, with clear signs of escalation, and as the perpetrators' message becomes clearer, Vicky begins to question where her own sympathies lie.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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....

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.

Met cop DI Rob Marshall is hot on the trail of the serial killer known as the Chameleon, who has abducted, tortured and killed a series of young women in Northwest London. As they close in, the Chameleon—who switches identity to get close to his victims—shoots Marshall’s partner and escapes.

Delaney Nichols, originally of Kansas but settling happily into her new life as a bookseller in Edinburgh, works at The Cracked Spine in the heart of town. She's recently befriended a few medical school students after they came into the shop to sell some antique medical tomes. But when one of the students' friends is found murdered outside in the alley, Delaney takes it upon herself to help bring the murderer to justice.

The disappearance of a three-year-old girl from her isolated Highland home one summer shook the nation. A massive police search involving divers in the loch and dogs combing the moorland and mountains had failed to find Lily Masterton. Three years later, the world may have forgotten the blond-haired girl with the big blue eyes, but her grief-stricken parents hire Private Investigator Teàrlach Paterson—an expert in finding missing children—to bring their precious Lily home. But this is no ordinary family struck by tragedy.

DS Rakesh Siyal is an idealist. Frustrated as an Edinburgh human rights lawyer, he joins the police, determined to solve the problems he sees with the criminal justice system from the inside, rather than out. His first day as a cop sees him sent down to Galashiels in the Scottish Borders, where he’s given a simple task – return a suspect to Glasgow to face justice.

Eilean Eadar is a barren, windswept rock best known for the unsolved mystery of the three lighthouse keepers who vanished back in 1919. But when a young man is found dead at the base of that same lighthouse, two detective inspectors are sent from Glasgow to investigate.

Beneath the surface lie deadly secrets... DI Shona Oliver agreed to move to Dumfries with her ex-banker husband when their teenage daughter got in with a bad crowd in London. As a Glasgow native, she's back on home turf. Living on the shores of the Solway Firth allows Shona to continue as an RNLI volunteer, and a call out to recover a woman's body indicates foul play. Police in Cumbria take the case but links back to Scotland keep Shona's team involved. As they investigate, reports of people trafficking and a spate of thefts from local shops compete for attention with a large scale drug bust.