Sorted on book title (not in series order)
It's Saturday evening, 9 March 1566, and Mary, Queen of Scots, is six months pregnant. She's hosting a supper party, secure in her private chambers. She doesn't know that her Palace is surrounded – that, right now, an army of men is creeping upstairs to her chamber. They're coming to murder...Read more
Their eyes met across a crowded room. She was just a poor servant girl and he was the son of a rich industrialist. Er, no, this is a Christopher Brookmyre novel, although the eyes meeting across a crowded room part is true. Where it differs from the fairy tales is that the room in question...Read more
Charles Krogh long ago promised he would never get involved with intelligence work again. But now he feels a familiar tightening in his heart... an exhilarating, alarming feeling that he was once more a player in that vast invisible game without rules, the game of deception and bluff and...Read more
When a young woman is found unconscious at the wheel of her car, evidence at the scene suggests this was no ordinary crash. Especially when it turns out her boyfriend is the son of the Scottish Justice Minister and neither of them is willing to talk to the police.
Meanwhile, John...Read more
Lachlan Harriot is in a state of shock. His wife Susie has been convicted of the murder of serial killer Andrew Gow, a prisoner in her care. Unless Harriot can come up with grounds for an appeal, Susie will be given a life sentence, depriving her of her home, her family and her two-year-old...Read more
The devilish girls of Sigma Tau Nu
There’s simply nothing they wouldn’t do–
1958: Sandra Delites is packed off to college in Connecticut after an ‘incident’ with another girl. Her father thinks a small town university will be just the thing to straighten her out, only...Read more
How much blood would you spill to avenge those you love? Andy Park passes out at the sight of blood, but he thinks he's discovered a way to make his family's enemies pay. He isn't prepared for the fall-out, though. Before long, his teenage son is in mortal danger, and his daughter and her...Read more
They call him Sawbones: a serial killer touring America, kidnapping young women.
The FBI are trying to catch him - but they're getting nowhere.
The latest victim is Laura Jones, 16, blonde, pretty ... and the daughter of one of New York's biggest gangsters. Laura...Read more
Auctioneer Rilke has been trying to stay out of trouble, keeping his life more or less respectable. Business has been slow at Bowery Auctions, so when an old friend, Jojo, gives Rilke a tip-off for a house clearance, life seems to be looking up. The next day Jojo washes up dead....Read more
Edinburgh police inspector John Rebus's obsession--rock & roll--seems odd for a man whose dark, depressed side is so central to his character, but Ian Rankin always manages to work it gracefully into his noirish novels featuring Rebus. In Set in Darkness , Rebus has a fling with Lorna...Read more
When George Millar, the City of Glasgow’s orchestra leader, is brutally murdered in his dressing room before a performance, his colleagues are shocked. As the show goes on, DCI Lorimer and psychologist Solomon Brightman uncover a series of irrevocably tangled relationships between the...Read more
No suspects. No clues. No rest for the wicked.
'You will raise money for the safe return of Alison and Jenny McGregor. If you raise enough money within fourteen days they will be released. If not, Jenny will be killed.'
Aberdeen's own...Read more
Two seven-year old boys have been abducted from the streets of Glasgow. Both had already endured years of neglect and betrayal - but for Detective Inspector Colin Anderson the case is especially disturbing, because the boys look so much like his own son Peter...
Then, with...Read more
In the center of historic Edinburgh, builders are preparing to convert a disused Victorian Gothic building into luxury flats. They are understandably surprised to find skeletal remains hidden in a high pinnacle that hasn’t been touched by maintenance for years. But who do the bones belong...Read more
An explosion rocks Princes Street in the midst of the Edinburgh Festival. Responsibility is claimed by a group supposedly demanding political separation from Britain, but as atrocities escalate, Head of CID Bob Skinner realizes this is no gang of fanatics, but a highly professional team....Read more
Deputy Chief Constable Bob Skinner could be forgiven for thinking not only that someone up there doesn't like him, but that someone down here is out to get him. Suffering the strain of a marriage on the rocks, the last thing he needs is for his private life to be plastered across the front...Read more
Skinner must help a criminal in order to catch a killer, in this sixth novel in the bestselling Edinburgh crime series.
When an Edinburgh car showroom is torched, leaving a charred body among the burnt-out luxury cars, Deputy Chief Constable Bob Skinner wonders if a life of crime...Read more
Skinner faces both the biggest case of his career and crippling personal crisis in this thrilling fifth novel in Quintin Jardine's bestselling Edinburgh crime series.
A mid-air explosion; a plane plunges to disaster from the Scottish skies, the British and American Defence...Read more
Bob Skinner must challenge local beliefs and legends to solve a gruesome murder in this fourth installment in the fantastic Scottish crime series.
A four-day tournament involving the world's leading golfers is being staged to mark the opening of a new country club created on the...Read more
When a murdered prostitute is found in a Glasgow train station, DCI Lorimer is perplexed by the ritualistic arrangement of her body. It isn't long before there is another murder and he realises there's no time to waste if he is to stop Glasgow's latest serial killer.
A taut,...Read more
Each society gets the serial killers it deserves...
How sick are you of our vapid celebrity culture, reality TV shows and tawdry talent contests? Not as sick as Simon Darcourt—but let’s face it, nobody is as sick as Simon Darcourt. A deranged but inventive killer with a...Read more
He’s back...
Eight years ago, ‘The Inside Man’ murdered four women and left three more in critical condition—all of them with their stomachs slit open and a plastic doll stitched inside.
And then the killer just... disappeared.
Ash Henderson was a Detective...Read more
Is one of the world's top golfers a child-killer? Or is it a camp follower, or a local? Sheriff Hector Drummond's gardener's son is murdered so for him it is personal. It is 1927 and Bobby Jones is in St Andrews. He is favourite to retain his Open crown, but can he win the hearts of the...Read more
After five years out in the cold of retirement (literally: he’s been working cold cases as a civilian) Rebus has managed to wangle his way back to CID as a semi-official investigator in Standing in Another Man’s Grave, which also marks five years since our last fictional sighting of him....Read more
'The bodies never stay buried forever...'
On a freezing winter morning, fishermen pull a body from the sea. It is quickly discovered that the dead man was the prime suspect in a decade-old investigation, when a prominent civil servant disappeared without trace...Read more
Armed men invade a family home, shouting for a man nobody's heard of. As DS Morrow tries to uncover one family's secrets, she must protect her own.Read more
Detective Sergeant Sam Batford has been lying low at a remote safe house in the highlands of Scotland. He's doing his best not to attract the attention of the enemies he made, on both sides of the law, during his last under-cover operation but Batford knows he’s just killing time until he's...Read more
Stranded demonstrates yet again the scope of Val McDermid's imagination, her versatility as a stylist and her immense powers as a storyteller. As well as McDermid's popular series character, private eye Kate Brannigan, this diverse collection contains narrative voices, both female and male...Read more
Gregor Jack, MP, well-liked, young, married to the fiery Elizabeth - to the outside world a very public success story. But Jack's carefully nurtured career plans take a tumble after a 'mistake' during a police raid on a notorious Edinburgh brothel. Then Elizabeth disappears, a couple of...Read more
Prudence Barrymore, a talented nurse who had worked with Florence Nightingale in the Crimea, is found strangled to death in a London hospital. Private inquiry agent William Monk is engaged to investigate this horrific crime. Gradually, Monk assembles the portrait of a remarkable woman. Yet...Read more