Scotland Mystery

In Rebus's Scotland Ian Rankin uncovers the Scotland that the tourist never sees, highlighting the places that inspired the settings for the Inspector Rebus novels. Rankin also reveals the story of Rebus and how he came into being, who he is, and what his - and Rankin's - Scotland is like.

It's DS Logan McRae's first day back on the job after a year off on the sick, and it couldn't get much worse. Four-year-old David Reid's body is discovered in a ditch - strangled, mutilated and a long time dead. There's a killer stalking the Granite City and the local media are baying for blood. If that wasn't enough, Logan also has to contend with a new boss, DI Insch, who doesn't suffer fools gladly and thinks everyone's a fool.

No one thinks very much at all about carwash employee Davey Burnet, until one day he takes the wrong customer's motor for a ride. One kidnapping later, he and the carwash are officially part of Glasgow's criminal underworld, working for a psychopath who enjoys playing games like "Keep Yer Kneecaps" with any poor bastard who crosses him. Can Davey escape from the gang's clutches with his kneecaps and life intact? Perhaps this polis Ally McCoist who keeps nosing around the carwash could help. That's if she doesn't get herself killed first.

Scotland, 1906. A mysterious object discovered inside an ancient castle calls Maximilian Haywood, the new Duke of Olympia, and his fellow researcher Emmeline Truelove north to the remote Orkney Islands. No stranger to the study of anachronisms in archeological digs, Haywood is nevertheless puzzled by the artifact: a suit of clothing that, according to family legend, once belonged to a selkie who rose from the sea and married the castle's first laird. But Haywood and Truelove soon realize they're not the only ones interested in the selkie's strange hide.

Magazine editor and part-time archaeologist, Gill McArdle is getting it together. Or at least, he thinks he is, until the death of a friend throws his life into turmoil. He’s on Orkney, researching an elaborate stone carrying an ancient religious motif. But he’s perplexed as the carving long predates any previous incidence of the symbol’s first use. Either someone is tampering with Orcadian archaeology, or Gill is facing a puzzle that can’t be resolved.

In Scotland, the Gandiegow quilters are in an uproar when their favorite fictional quilters - the Buttermilk Guild - are killed off by a best-selling mystery author. Diana McKellen is called in by the publisher to fix this PR nightmare. It's said, there's no such thing as bad publicity, but Diana questions this long-standing notion when an editor is murdered at a book signing.

Zwei Opfer, eine Tatwaffe, kein Motiv - das perfekte Verbrechen? Ein wolkenloser Sommertag, die Hitze drückt aufs Land. Im Zug von London nach York zielt ein Fremder mit einer Pistole auf eine Frau. Sie entkommt in letzter Sekunde. Zwei Tage später: Eine junge Frau stürzt mit ihrem Fahrrad, weil jemand einen dünnen Draht über den Weg gespannt hat. Sie ist sofort bewusstlos. Den folgenden Schuss hört sie schon nicht mehr.

Christmastime in London. When three seemingly unconnected victims are murdered with matching sequential Roman numerals carved into their foreheads, Metropolitan Police Commander Austin Grant finds his answer in one of the last places he'd expect: the Holy Bible. Each of the deaths correspond to a transgression of one of the Ten Commandments, and Grant must find the killer before the remaining Commandments are commemorated with homicides.

When you’re the editor of a successful investigative journal, you don’t dash around Scotland chasing after loch monsters. But Gill McArdle didn’t believe in unicorns either, and speaking honestly, he was fortunate to walk away from that one. He’s a scientist, and not one of the wild-eyed optimists spending their days, scanning the loch for a creature. And here’s his problem. With every passing hour, evidence mounts that something is stirring.

Mystery 1: Pascal Tourret Private Detective - When Madame Duclos employs Pascale Tourret to help her to save her daughter from a life of crime, the investigation takes Pascale from his home in the Lot region of France to the busy streets of Paris. DETECTIVE 2: The European Quest to Find a Murderer - The Thief of Time - The hunt continues for the killer of young girls through different European countries. With children being discovered being smuggled into the United Kingdom, Patrick Jobin leaves his native France to help in the apprehension of the murderer.

This collection features two mysteries. In the first, Madame Duclos employs Pascale Tourret to help her save her daughter from a life of crime, and the investigation takes Pascale from his home in the Lot region of France to the busy streets of Paris. There, he encounters Maurice Gautier, who is producing bad methamphetamine that is killing college kids. In the second mystery, an old flame asks for Tourret's help to find out who has stolen this year's batch of Chateau Trepagnier Beaujolais Nouveau wine, and what he finds isn't what he expects.

Dense fog masks foul play in the streets of London, as Ann Granger brings us her seventh Victorian mystery featuring Scotland Yard's Inspector Ben Ross and his wife, Lizzie. It is March 1870. London is in the grip of fog and ice. But Scotland Yard's Inspector Ben Ross has more than the weather to worry about when the body of a young woman is found in a dustbin at the back of a Piccadilly restaurant.

One bitterly cold February night at the remote MacKinnon Hotel, Remie Yorke begins her last shift at the front desk as the snow begins to fall. She has booked a one-way flight for the next day—and she's never coming back to Scotland. Or so she thinks. As the storm quickly invades the surrounding Highlands, the roads become impassable and the phone lines fall dead. When the icy temperatures plummet further, an injured man stumbles into the hotel lobby from the blizzard. Police Constable Don Gaines has been in a car accident on the mountain road, and Remie welcomes him to safety.

Ex-priest DI Farrell is called on to investigate a gruesome death in rural Scotland. All evidence points to suicide, except for one loose end: every light in the cottage was switched off. Why would he kill himself in the dark? The question sparks a murder investigation that leads to the mysterious Ivy House, home of ‘The Collective’, a sinister commune of artists who will do anything to keep their twisted secrets hidden. And when the remains of a young girl are uncovered on a barren stretch of coastline, Farrell realises that there is something rotten in this tight-knit community.

Ex-priest DI Frank Farrell has returned to his roots in Dumfries, only to be landed with a disturbing murder case. Even worse, Farrell knows the victim: Father Boyd, the man who forced him out of the priesthood 18 years earlier. With no leads, Farrell must delve into the old priest’s past, one that is inexorably linked with his own. But his attention is diverted when a pair of twin boys go missing. The Dumfries police force recover one in an abandoned church, unharmed. But where is his brother?

DI Frank Farrell and DS McLeod are tasked with investigating the brutal murder of a defence solicitor’s wife in Dumfries. It’s been over a year since they left the town after an investigation robbed them of a dear friend. But now they’re back and must find a way to move on. When the son of another defence solicitor is murdered, a strange tattoo etched on his body, the case takes them into darker, more disturbing territory.

She's a vivacious, light-hearted young beauty from Beacon Hill. He's a world-weary not-so-young exile from Scotland Yard. She's an orphaned decorator who longs for a family of her own. He's a rogue detective with a superhero complex. She's smitten with this superhero who is the last man she sees in the picket-fence picture of her future. He's smitten with this fluffy young romantic who he sees as kryptonite to his career and well-being. But if you saw Grace and David in a room full of people, and you had to pick one man and one woman who belonged together, you would pick them. They would be The Throwbacks.

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.

It’s 1981 in Fort Myers, Florida. Scotland Ross hasn’t given up drinking, but he has sworn off of trouble. At a waterside tavern the day the pope got shot, Scotland drank to cloud the memories of his dead infant son on an anniversary such as this. Distraction comes when the bar owner needs his help. Despite his vow of living within the law, Scotland soon finds himself tangling with a redneck clan, a Cuban gang, a connected crew from New York, and the very friend he set out to help.

Agaton Sax faces one of his most challenging cases yet, when a secretive criminal mastermind steals Scotland Yard's 'register of current criminals' from under the nose of Inspector Joshua Lispington. Agaton will have to employ all of his considerable skill and intellect to get it back, overcoming fake detectives, masked men, incompetent sailors and even dastardly pirates! It’s all just another day in the exciting life of Sweden's finest detective.