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Scottish Crime Fiction Booklist
Page Modified: June 1, 2007
Crime Fiction with a Scottish setting.
A list of books, many of which received at least one starred review (indicating a work of unusual merit) from the following review sources: Booklist (BL), Publisher's Weekly (PW), Kirkus, and Library Journal (LJ). Additional titles of interest may be included on this list. Titles are alphabetically by author.
Annotations are from Advance, the Ingram Book Magazine, unless noted.- Death of a Scriptwriter
Author: Beaton, M.C.
Publisher: Mysterious List Price: $ 22 ISBN: 0892966440 Date: 1998
BL
Scotland's lovable Hamish MacBeth - the one-man village police force - investigates the death of an actress and a television writer in this latest episode in the popular series.
- Death of an Addict
Author: Beaton, M. C.
Publisher: Mysterious Price: $ 22 ISBN: 0892966750 Date: 1999
Booklist
Constable Hamish Macbeth, the beloved Scottish detective, is now faced with a mysterious murder and undercover drug operation in Amsterdam.
- Death of
a Dustman: Hamish MacBeth
Author: Beaton, M.C.
Publisher: Mysterious $ 22.95 ISBN: 0892966319 Date: 2001
Booklist
A bullying tyrant with a neat uniform and a new truck, Lochdubh's dustman, Fergus Macleod, issues harsh fines and enforces petty rules--until he is found dead, stuffed into a recycling bin. Harnish Macbeth not only must solve the murder, but juggle his lazy new constable and labor trouble washing over the new oceanfront hotel.
Updated 1/24/01 - Death of a Dreamer
Author: Beaton, M.C.
Publisher: Warner $ 23.95 ISBN: 0892967897 Date: 2006
Booklist
Hamish Macbeth is on the trail of a killer with a penchant for poison in this novel of murder in the Scottish Highlands. When Effie Garrand is found poisoned by hemlock, it's up to Macbeth to find her killer before more nightmares unfold.
Updated 12.5.05 - Body Politic
Author: Johnson, Paul
Publisher: St Martins List Price: $ 22.95 ISBN: 0312202792 Date: 1999
PW
Gorky Park meets Brave New World in this award-winning debut novel of a serial killer lost in a supposedly perfect society overtaken by the Enlightenment.
Suggested Reading: Dystopian Stars
-
Water of Death
Author: Johnston, Paul
Publisher: Minotaur $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312273118 Date: 2001
Booklist
Edinburgh, 2025: an almost crime-free oasis surrounded by anarchic city-states. But global warming has turned summer into the Big Heat, and water, like everything else, is strictly rationed. Citizens live only for the weekly lottery drawing. When a recent winner goes missing, however, subversive investigator Quintilian Dalrymple is called in to deal with a case of the summertime blues. Then a body is discovered face down in the Water of Leith, and the only clue to the death is a bottle of contraband whisky. Quint thinks he sees traces of a conspiracy to destabilize the city, as the body count -- like the temperature -- keeps on rising.
Suggested Reading: Dystopian Stars
Updated 3/13/01 - Cold Granite
Author: MacBride, Stuart
Publisher: Minotaur $ 24.95 ISBN: 031233995x Date: 2005
Booklist PW LJ
DCI Logan McRae returns to his job in Aberdeen CID after recuperating from a gunshot wound and finds himself assigned to a brutal serial killer case.
Suggested Reading: All Stars | Debuts
Updated 6.29.05 - The Sunday Philosophy Club: Isabel Dalhousie
Author: McCall Smith, Alexander
Publisher: Pantheon $ 19.95 ISBN: 0375422986 Date: 2004
PW Booklist
Filled with endearingly thorny characters and a Scottish atmosphere as dense and savory as oatmeal, The Sunday Philosophy Club is irresistible, and Isabel Dalhousie is the most delightful literary sleuth since Precious Ramotswe.
Updated 8.13.04 - Friends, Lovers, Chocolate: Sunday Philosophy Club
Author: McCall Smith, Alexander
Publisher: Pantheon $ 21.95 ISBN: 0375422994 Date: 2005
Kirkus Booklist
The delightful second installment in Alexander McCall Smith's already hugely popular new detective series, The Sunday Philosophy Club, stars the irrepressibly curious Isabel Dalhousie--editor of the "Journal of Applied Ethics"--and her no-nonsense housekeeper, Grace.
Updated 7.11.05 - Distant Echo
Author: McDermid, Val
Publisher: Minotaur $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312301995 Date: 2003
Booklist PW
Four students stumble upon the body of a young woman who has been raped and murdered. When the case is reopened 25 years later, two of the four former students die suspiciously, and Alex must find the real killer before he becomes the next victim.
Suggested Reading: Cold Cases | Adult Books for Teens
Updated 9.08.03 - Garnet Hill
Author: Mina, Denise
Publisher: Carroll and Graf Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0786706120 Date: 1999
PW
Kirkus
Mina's taut crime novel plunges into the dark side of Glasgow's grimmest neighborhood, Garnethill, with a heroine who may be emotionally battered but who is no victim.
Exile - Resolution
Author: Mina, Denise
Publisher: Carrol & Graf $ 25 ISBN: 0786710101 Date: 2002
PW
Booklist
Blending suspense, compassion, raw instinct, and grim wit, this powerful conclusion to the Garnethill trilogy returns to the seamy side of downtown Glasgow and the untidy world of Maureen O'Donnell.
Updated 5/9/02 - Deception
Author: Mina, Denise
Publisher: Little Brown $ 23.95 ISBN: 0316735922 Date: 2004
Kirkus PW
Scotland's most exciting up-and-coming mystery novelist offers the story of a man's desperate search for evidence to overturn his wife's murder conviction. As Lachlan searches the forbidden sanctuary of Susie's home office for proof of her innocence, he uncovers evidence of her secret life.
Updated 7.26.04 - Field of Blood
Author: Mina, Denise
Publisher: Little Brown $ 24.95 ISBN: 0316735930 Date: 2005
PW LJ
In the explosive start of a new series by the author of the acclaimed Garnethill trilogy, neophyte journalist Paddy Meehan becomes intimately involved in her first assignment - the brutal murder of a local boy.
Updated 6.29.05 - Lamplighter
Author: O'Neill, Anthony
Publisher: Scribner $ 25 ISBN: 0743243498 Date: 2003
PW
Elegantly written and ingeniously executed, The Lamplighter inhabits the pre-Freudian era and explores the dangers of the suppressed imagination. Set in 19th-century Edinburgh, it features a professor of philosophy and his assistant as they unravel a series of gruesome murders and their connection to a troubled young woman.
Suggested Reading: Supernatural Stars
Updated 3.13.03 - Dead Souls
Author: Rankin, Ian
Publisher: Minotaur List Price: $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312202938 Date: 1999
Booklist
Between a convicted murderer free on parole, a pedophile living near a playground, and a high-school sweetheart whose teenage son is missing, John Rebus is in the middle of more than one dangerous, deadly mess, on the verge of losing his job, his lover - and his life.
- Set In Darkness
Author: Rankin, Ian
Publisher: Minotaur $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312206097 Date: 2000
Booklist
Kirkus
Library Journal
PW
As the first Scottish Parliament in 300 years prepares to convene, Queensbury House is in the middle of John Rebus's turf, keeping him busy with ceremonial tasks. But when a long dead body is found in the fireplace, and two more deaths occur, Rebus is led to a confrontation with one of Edinburgh's most notorious criminals.
Suggested Reading: All Stars | British Cops
Updated 9/29/00 - The Falls
Author: Rankin, Ian
Publisher: Minotaur $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312206100 Date: 2001
Kirkus
Booklist
PW
A student is missing, a coffin is found, and John Rebus must match wits with a fiendishly clever killer as ancient and modern evils are brought together in contemporary Scotland.
Suggested Reading: All Stars | British Police
Updated 10/2/01 - Resurrection Men: Inspector Rebus
Author: Rankin, Ian
Publisher: Little Brown $ 19.95 ISBN: 0316766844 Date: 2003
Kirkus
LJ
Inspector John Rebus has messed up badly this time, so badly that he's been sent to a kind of reform school for damaged cops. While there among the last-chancers known as "resurrection men, " he joins a covert mission to gain evidence of a drug heist orchestrated by three of his classmates.
Suggested Reading: Scottish Crime Fiction
Updated 1.16.03 - A Question of
Blood: Inspector Rebus
Author: Rankin, Ian
Publisher: Little Brown $ 22.95 ISBN: 0316095648 Date: 2004
PW
When a former soldier and recluse murders two 17-year-old students at a posh Edinburgh boarding school, Rebus immediately suspects there is more to the case than meets the eye.
Updated 1.5.04
Author: Mina, Denise
Publisher: Carrol & Graf $ 25 ISBN: 0786708387 Date: 2001
PWMaureen O'Donnell investigates the murder of Ann Harris, who'd had two broken ribs and reeked of alcohol when she'd visited Maureen's office at the women's shelter two weeks before her mutilated body washed up by the Thames hundreds of miles away. Maureen travels to London to search out the circumstances surrounding Ann's brutal death.
Updated 1/18/01
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