Showing results by publisher "Canongate Books" in Crime Fiction

'Unputdownable' Sunday Times 'I was hooked from page one' Guardian When Rilke, a dissolute auctioneer, comes upon a hidden collection of violent and highly disturbing photographs, he feels compelled to discover more about the deceased owner who coveted them. Soon he finds himself sucked into an...

Cal may only be twelve years old, but his father has threatened to throw him onto the streets if he doesn’t start earning his keep. Keen to prove himself, he unearths an opportunity through stealthy eavesdropping. Two gentlemen need help transporting an unnamed cargo across the Firth of Forth, no questions asked. Cal is happy to secure the job, but soon discovers that holding up his end will entangle him in a ruthless underworld of thievery, smuggling and body snatchers.

Lawyer Bobby Carter did a lot of work for the wrong type of people. Now he’s dead, and it was no accident. Besides a distraught family and a heap of powerful friends, Carter’s left behind his share of enemies. So, who dealt the fatal blow? DC Jack Laidlaw’s reputation precedes him. He’s not a team player, but he’s got a sixth sense for what’s happening on the streets. His boss chalks the violence up to the usual rivalries, but is it that simple? As two Glasgow gangs go to war, Laidlaw needs to find out who got Carter before the whole city explodes. 

Young women are being discovered dead across the Old Town, all having suffered similarly gruesome ends. In the New Town, medical student Will Raven is about to start his apprenticeship with the brilliant and renowned Dr Simpson. Simpson's patients range from the richest to the poorest of this divided city. His house is like no other, full of visiting luminaries and daring experiments in the new medical frontier of anaesthesia.

It’s hard to be good when living is expensive. And times are tough on the streets these days. Luckily for Rilke at Bowery Auctions the demand for no-questions-asked cash is at an all-time high, and business is booming. When Rilke hears his old acquaintance Les is fresh out of prison, his...

1854 marks the dawn of a scientific age. Queen Victoria delivers a healthy heir after receiving chloroform during labour. Florence Nightingale makes headlines as she leads a troop of middle-class women out into the war zones as nurses. In Edinburgh, we see Henry Littlejohn appointed as the city's police surgeon, dubbing himself as the 'medical detective', investigating sudden deaths - whether accidental or intentional.

Jaq's worked hard on the road since she was fourteen, bringing in money to keep her broken family afloat. Now she's built a good life near the top of the Summerhouse crew, with a beautiful home she shares with her girlfriend Becks and her heavily pregnant older sister Lauryn. But messages are coming in - good and bad - and Jaq has to make a choice: step back from the road and start a life she's never even considered. Or seize her opportunities and risk everything for life-changing money. Either way, Jaq will make enemies. And those enemies aren't going to let her go easily.

Hornclaw is a 65-year-old female contract killer who is considering retirement. A fighter who has experienced loss and grief early on in life, she lives in a state of self-imposed isolation, with just her dog, Deadweight, for company. While on an assassination job for the 'disease control' company she works for, Hornclaw makes an uncharacteristic error, causing a sequence of events that brings her past well and truly into the present.

Jim Brennan is flying high. Against all odds he is a big man at the university, tipped for the head job and an office at the top of the ivory tower. He has a beautiful, accomplished wife and two healthy children. Jim drives an Audi, and his dog is a pedigree bichon frise. Not bad for the son of a hardman who grew up in a room and kitchen. But it is not easy to escape the past. Certain people have been keeping an eye on Professor Jim Brennan. When is son is arrested on drugs charges and lands in prison after breaking bail conditions, Jim is approached by men he thought he had left behind.

A woman enters a Glasgow police station to report her son missing, but no record can be found of the boy. When Detective Harry McCoy, seconded from the cop shop across town, discovers the family is part of the cultish Church of Christ's Suffering, he suspects there is more to Michael's disappearance than meets the eye.

Glasgow is a city in mourning. An arson attack on a hairdresser's has left five dead. Tempers are frayed, and sentiments running high. When three youths are charged, the city goes wild. A crowd gathers outside the courthouse, but as the police drive the young men to prison, the van is rammed by a truck and the men are grabbed and bundled into a car. The next day, the body of one of them is dumped in the city centre. A note has been sent to the newspaper: one down, two to go. Detective Harry McCoy has 24 hours to find the kidnapped boys before they all turn up dead.

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. Jojo liked Grindr hook-ups and recreational drugs - is that the reason the police won't investigate? And if Rilke doesn't find out what happened to Jojo, who will?

Edinburgh, 1850. Despite being at the forefront of modern medicine, hordes of patients are dying all across the city, with doctors finding their remedies powerless. But it is not just the deaths that dismay the esteemed Dr James Simpson - a whispering campaign seeks to blame him for the death of a patient in suspicious circumstances. Simpson's protégé Will Raven and former housemaid Sarah Fisher are determined to clear their patron's name. 

Eck Adamson, an alcoholic vagrant, summons Jack Laidlaw to his deathbed. Probably the only policeman in Glasgow who would bother to respond, Laidlaw sees in Eck's cryptic last message a clue to the murder of a gangland thug and the disappearance of a student. With stubborn integrity, Laidlaw tracks a seam of corruption that runs from the top to the bottom of society.

When his brother dies stepping out in front of a car, Detective Jack Laidlaw is determined to find out what really happened. With corrosive wit, Laidlaw relates an emotional quest through Glasgow's underworld, and into the past. He discovers as much about himself as the loved brother he has lost in a search that leads to a shattering climax.

Dr Will Raven is a man seldom shocked by human remains, but even he is disturbed by the contents of a package washed up at the Port of Leith. Stranger still, a man Raven has long detested is pleading for his help to escape the hangman. Back in the townhouse of Dr James Simpson, Sarah Fisher has set her sights on learning to practise medicine. Almost everyone seems intent on dissuading her from this ambition, but when word reaches her that a woman has recently obtained a medical degree despite her gender, Sarah decides to seek her out.

When an American sailor from the Holy Loch Base goes missing, Harry McCoy is determined to find him. But as he investigates, a wave of bombings hits Glasgow - with the threat of more to come. Soon McCoy realises that the sailor may be part of a shadowy organisation committed to a very different kind of Scotland. One they are prepared to kill for.