George Paterson (Into Books, 2023); pbk; £10.99 Westerwick is the second novel from George Paterson, whose sensational 2022 debut The Girl, The Crow, The Writer, The Fighter was always going to be a tough act to follow. Like Paterson’s first novel, Westerwick is a crime thriller, but it diverges sharply from its predecessor with a local Read More
A psychological thriller, entwining local myth and legend with modern day themes of love, loyalty and survival, The Unmaking of Ellie Rook leads on from Sandra Ireland’s previous works, Beneath the Skin and Bone Deep, to explore the dark side of family dynamics, skewed loyalties and emotional manipulation. Set in a fictional village based around Read More
From Lapland to Dundee (via London and Edinburgh), Hania Allen is well-travelled – in terms of writing at least. Her first novel, The Ice Hotel (2005), takes place in an ice hotel in Swedish Lapland; her subsequent books starring the detective Veronica ‘Von’ Valenti are set in London and Edinburgh and Hania’s current series, featuring Read More
Bute Noir is a three-day crime writing festival held in the town of Rothesay on the Isle of Bute, a short ferry from Glasgow. Despite being one of the smaller venues for such a festival, the island can hold its own in the field, with some of the most respected authors of this genre attending Read More
Cross Purpose is an energetic debut novel that attempts to perform a balancing act between a gritty Tartan Noir and a darkly comic detective novel. Claire MacLeary’s first novel jumps into Scottish crime fiction with both feet. She doesn’t flinch away from the torrid tedium of life in Scottish council estates, but embraces the dichotomy Read More
(This is a lightly edited transcript of the interview; to view the whole interview, please click image above) Edward Small: Hello. I’m Eddie Small. I lecture in Creative Writing at the University of Dundee and we’re here today to do an interview with one of our past students on behalf of DURA, Dundee University Review of Read More
Deadlier than the Male, the tabloids said. They didn’t know the half of it. When reviewing Russel McLean’s previous novel Cry Uncle, I used the following sentence, “The gritty and honest narration has a truly Scottish attitude.” This is also true, perhaps even more so, of his newest book Ed’s Dead. McLean has already established Read More
The DCA doesn’t seem like the right place to meet Russel D. McLean. It doesn’t seem fitting for the author of the five McNee Private Investigator novels, all set in the grimmer parts of Dundee, to be meeting up with me in this most contemporary and modern of venues. As he arrives a little flustered, Read More
I must admit I felt a little strange looking in on what looked like an ancient muslin flower which might have fallen from Miss Havisham’s veil…I immediately felt it could be the core of a Rhona book. This is how the author describes how None but the Dead was “born”. Lin Anderson is an exponent Read More
Graeme Macrae Burnet (Contraband/Saraband, 2015); pbk, £8.99 His Bloody Project, is not only the title of this novel, (a work of fiction constructed to give the appearance of a factual account), it is also the title of a sensationalist chapbook referred to later in the novel, based on the memoir of our unreliable narrator and Read More
