Scottish Police

The annual West Uist literary festival - The Gathering - always attracts the best in the business. But with the tiny island population suddenly doubling, the local police force is stretched to breaking point. And this year they have to deal with more than just drunken fights and rowdy behavior. Ranald Buchanan, the local poet, is found dead, with his head brutally caved in, and Inspector Torquil McKinnon is brought in to investigate.

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.

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.

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.

Was the biggest case of his career the worst mistake he ever made? Ten years ago, DCI Jack Logan stopped the serial child-killer dubbed "Mister Whisper", earning himself a commendation, a drinking problem, and a broken marriage in the process...When another child disappears a hundred miles north in the Highlands, Jack is sent to lead the investigation and bring the boy home. But as similarities between the two cases grow, could it be that Jack caught the wrong man all those years ago?

It is a serendipitous encounter for the hapless DI Greg Byrne when retired sleuth James Munro stumbles upon his crime scene. And perhaps also for Munro himself, who, his protégé Charlie West having firmly snapped his apron strings, needs other lambs to wean. The day is far less auspicious for the victim in the affair, the unfortunate property developer Rebecca Barlow, who has been trussed up like a scarecrow in her yard. Though occurring off DI West’s Ayrshire patch, the investigation will soon intertwine with one of her own.

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.

How far would you go to bury the truth? While searching for a missing hill walker, Glencoe Mountain Rescue Team uncovers a body - just not the one they were looking for. Still dealing with the fallout from their last case, DCI Jack Logan and his team venture south from Inverness to investigate a brutal, gangland-style execution in the wilds of the Highland countryside. As the victim's dark secrets are gradually revealed, Jack uncovers the rot lurking beneath the stunning scenery, making himself the target of a criminal more dangerous than any he has faced before.

When a nurse is murdered on her way home from nightshift, Jack and his team go on the hunt for her killer. As more victims are uncovered, Jack finds himself tracking a murderer afflicted by a unique psychosis - one that leaves him free to maim and kill without a shred of remorse. Facing a new type of killer in an unfamiliar city, DCI Jack Logan is about to be pushed to his limits, before being forced to realize just how little he truly knows.

On New Year’s Day, Shetland lies buried beneath a deep layer of snow. Trudging home, Fran Hunter's eye is drawn to a vivid splash of colour on the white ground, ravens circling above. It is the strangled body of her teenage neighbour. As Fran opens her mouth to scream, the ravens continue their deadly dance. The body is found close to the home of a lonely outcast and local suspicion falls firmly on him. But when Inspector Jimmy Perez insists on broadening the search for suspects, a veil of distrust and fear is thrown over the entire community.

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 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....

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.

DCI Jack Logan should’ve known things were going too well. Genuinely happy for the first time in years, Jack has almost fooled himself into believing that the world is a decent place. But when the discovery of a mutilated body kicks off a series of grisly murders, Jack’s dream of a peaceful life rapidly begins to crumble around him. With friends in danger and enemies begging for his help, Jack must risk everything to protect the final would-be victim and stop the most monstrous killer he’s ever faced.

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.

When the chief suspect in the notorious "peekaboo cop killer" case blew himself up, almost taking lead investigator DCI Duncan Bone with him, the psychologically damaged detective thought his days on the force were over. But, when another PC is abducted and murdered in the same deranged peekaboo fashion, Bone is persuaded to return to lead the new investigation.

When a badly burned body is found near the remote Ardnamurchan Lighthouse on the west coast of Scotland, it feels like just another day on the job for DCI Jack Logan and his team. But the victim’s list of enemies, including a diminutive loan shark and a powerful local politician, is far longer than Jack was prepared for. And don’t even get him started on the magic psychic sex cult.

When a badly mutilated body washes up on the shores of Loch Ness, DCI Jack Logan's dream of a quiet life in the Highlands is shattered. While the media speculates wildly about monster attacks, Jack and the Major Investigations Team must act fast to catch the killer before they can strike again. But with Nessie-hunters descending on the area in their dozens, and an old enemy rearing his ugly head, the case could well turn out to be the most challenging of Jack's career. And, if he isn't careful, the last.

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.

Hamish Macbeth, constable in the small Scottish Highland town of Lochdubh, is feeling down after losing both his promotion and his girlfriend, the town beauty, Priscilla Halbourton-Smythe. A trip to a charming seaside inn with his dog Towser's meant to raise his sagging spirits. Instead, he arrives at “Friendly House” to find the ambiance chilling, the food inedible, and his fellow guests less than neighborly. There’s an amorous spinster, two flirty girls, a retired military man, a secretive London family, and Bob Harris, who so nags his wife that everyone wants to kill him.