A fast-paced historical Highland thriller

The creation of Great Britain is certainly a topical subject. Using her knowledge of the English Tudor and Stuart periods, S J Garland creates this fast-paced historical thriller based at the time of the signing of the Act of Union. Set in the Highlands, a man is sent to become an excise collector but things…

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Mysteries as people vanish on a Scots island

The fictional island of Bancree, a place inspired by the author’s trips to the Scottish isles, plays host to a story of mystery and intrigue about a teenage girl and a string of disappearances. People aren’t only arriving on Bancree – they are disappearing too. When a mysterious man and his daughter move into isolated…

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A wartime thriller with the action in Orkney

This is one of three fast-paced thrillers written by Ken Lussey and set in Scotland during wartime. Located in Orkney in 1942, it’s a story of war and deception, and centres around group captain Bob Sutherland and his MI11 team. Flown in to inspect the naval base in Orkney, they find that things are far…

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Blasted Things is more than a historical novel

The 16th novel from award-winning Edinburgh author Lesley Glaister, Blasted Things deserves to be read by all. Set just after World War One, not only are we expertly transported to a different era, but the characters we meet along the way are both alluring and peculiar, as is her genre. Blasted Things straddles the categories…

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Brookmyre’s latest thriller is a Cut above the rest

Dark humour and jittering suspense underlines the twisting narrative of Chris Brookmyre’s latest thriller. Expertly crafted, our unconventional characters Millicent and Jerry narrate us through their turbulent lives. Scarred by and scared of the world around her, we are introduced to Millicent, who has spent 25 years in jail for murder, but who is now…

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Novel approach to a virus in Edinburgh

Set in an Edinburgh recovering from a virus which targets young healthy people, Murder at the Music Factory is a thriller which starts at a fast pace. Unfortunately the book is littered with typos, but I still found the writing easy to read and despite not having read any of the other books in the…

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A gripping thriller in the Scottish Highlands

Fantastically eerie and atmospheric, this Gothic thriller set in the Highlands had me hooked from chapter one. Following the life of ten-year-old Lauren, who lives with her father in the Highlands, she struggles to cope with the disappearance of her mother; a woman she greatly admires but has little memory of. On Halloween, a gaunt,…

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A crime thriller on a Scottish island

We didn’t have to wait long for the next instalment of Inspector Angus Blue’s whodunnits, and it doesn’t disappoint. Called to Jura after an attempted assassination on a Cabinet Minister, the inspector finds himself in a series of fantastically eerie landscapes and is forced to overcome several unexpected hurdles. As with The Pead Dead, the…

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Criminal versus natural justice in crime thriller

Fastpaced and packed with twists and turns, Last Resort is the landmark 25th novel in Quintin Jardine’s Bob Skinner crime series. It shows Edinburgh’s toughest cop facing a very different kind of case. A quiet trip to Catalunya soon takes on a different flavour when Skinner is approached by an old friend with an unusual…

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Past and present collide in a thriller for teens

Sci-fi meets pre-history in Silver Skin, an epic adventure of a time-traveller, Rab, from the far future, who accidentally ends up in Skara Brae, Orkney during the Neolithic period. Throughout this story aimed at teenagers, Lennon paints a vivd picture of the pre-historic landscape and allows the readers to travel back in time. There is…

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