How the real smugglers of the Ray inspired my novel ‘The Riptide’

The Ray is real.

It is a small, low-lying islet in the Blackwater Estuary, just off Mersea Island in Essex, surrounded by salt marsh, mudflats and tidal channels. Today it is a quiet, remote place, but Ray and the surrounding country have a remarkably dark past.

This was smuggling country.

The geography explains much of it. The Essex coast is a maze of creeks, marshes, islands and channels, and the landscape changes dramatically with the tide. The Ray itself can feel almost detached from the mainland. To someone who knew the waterways, it offered innumerable opportunities to land a cargo, conceal it and move it inland. To a Revenue officer arriving from elsewhere, it must have been bewildering.

From the sixteenth century through into the nineteenth, Mersea and the surrounding villages became associated with the smuggling of tea, tobacco, spirits and other heavily taxed goods. The trade was sufficiently profitable to become part of the local economy. Fishermen, farmers, publicans and others could all benefit from contraband arriving through the creeks.

And there were some ingenious places to hide it.

One of my favourite stories concerns the Peldon Rose, the ancient inn just across the Strood from Mersea Island. The pond beside the inn was supposedly used as a hiding place for smuggled goods. According to the local tradition, barrels of spirits could be weighted down and lowered into the pond on ropes while the excise men searched the premises. There was said to be a concealed shaft or false bottom beneath the water, allowing the barrels to be hidden from anyone examining the pond. 

I first visited the Peldon Rose during lockdown – which made things tricky because it was all shut up and abandoned, a ghost of an inn. But, perhaps, that fitted with the themes of my novel, which is about how the hungry ghosts of the past can devour the present. Set in France during the French Revolution and Britain 20 years later, the currents of time are forever dragging people under.

The Peldon Rose wasn't an isolated case. Local accounts describe inns and houses throughout the area being used to store illicit goods. The people involved weren't necessarily hardened criminals. Smuggling could involve an entire network of otherwise respectable local people: someone who knew when a boat was coming in, someone who provided a cart, someone who hid a barrel in a cellar, someone who sold the goods on.

But the trade could also be brutally violent.

There is a notorious local story about a group of excise men who came to the Mersea area in search of smugglers. The smugglers, according to the story, deliberately allowed word to spread that a large landing of contraband was about to take place. The Revenue men took the bait. They gathered together and went out in a longboat, expecting to catch the smugglers in the act.

Instead, they were ambushed.

The traditional account says that the smugglers attacked the boat and murdered the excise men, cutting their throats and leaving their bodies. One version says that as many as twenty-four men were killed. The bodies were subsequently said to have been buried beneath an upturned boat in the churchyard at Virley.

Whether every detail has been embroidered by generations of retelling is less interesting than the fact that the story survived at all. It tells you something about the reputation the smugglers acquired – and about how dangerous the battle between the Revenue men and the smugglers could become.

The more I discovered, the more I realised that the landscape around the Ray was almost a ready-made thriller.

And I wasn't the first writer to notice.

Sabine Baring-Gould was rector of East Mersea from 1871 to 1881. He is probably best known today as the author of Onward, Christian Soldiers, but he was an extraordinary polymath: clergyman, folklorist, antiquarian and novelist. During his decade on Mersea he became fascinated by the stories and traditions of the place. His great fictional response was ‘Mehalah: A Story of the Salt Marshes’, published in 1880.

Like my novel, his is a dark, Gothic tale of violence, passion, revenge and smuggling, set around the real landscape of Mersea and the Ray during the period of the Napoleonic Wars. Baring-Gould knew the country intimately and used real places and local traditions in the book.

And then there was Margery Allingham.

Long before she became famous for Albert Campion, Allingham was fascinated by Mersea. Her first novel, ‘Blackkerchief Dick’, was published in 1923, when she was only nineteen, and is a historical adventure involving the smugglers of Mersea Island.

I loved discovering this literary succession. The smugglers create the stories; local people preserve them; Baring-Gould, the rector, turns them into Gothic fiction; Allingham turns them into an early crime novel; and eventually I came along and found that the landscape still contained the ingredients I needed.

I wasn't looking for a fictional landscape and then trying to make it seem real. I had the opposite problem. Reality had already done most of the work.

The Riptide by Gareth Rubin is published by Simon & Schuster (Out Now)

A dazzling, puzzle-box mystery of secrets, power and hidden truths. 1804, Isle of Ray, Essex. Lysander Rose has spent his life searching for the truth about his mother, abducted when he was just a baby. When the men who took her return for him, Lysander is forced to flee – leaving behind everything he knows. But in his escape, he uncovers a clue that draws him into the orbit of a secretive organisation known only as the Circle. As Lysander follows the trail from the Essex coast to the shadowed streets of Edinburgh, he finds himself entangled in a world of murder, blackmail and political intrigue. At its centre: an exiled king, and a conspiracy that could shape the fate of nations. And stranger still, the secrets of Lysander’s own past seem to be hidden in the pages of a lurid penny-blood chapbook – a story that may hold the key to who he really is. But as the truth of his origins begins to emerge, Lysander must decide whether he can escape the fate others have written for him.

More information about the author can be found on his website. He can also be found on Facebook and on X@GarethRubin

 

Andrew Lowe on The Vanishing Room and writing detectives whose minds work differently.

British policing has a curious blind spot. It increasingly recognises that neurodivergent people may possess cognitive strengths well suited to police work: unusual powers of concentration, persistence, attention to detail and a tendency to see things from unexpected angles. But it still has no reliable idea how many neurodivergent officers it employs.

Police Scotland says that around one in ten people has a neurodivergent condition, and now actively encourages neurodivergent applicants to discuss the adjustments they might need during recruitment. Other forces have introduced similar schemes.

Yet national workforce statistics still don't tell us how many serving officers are autistic, or have ADHD, dyslexia or other forms of neurodivergence. In some forces the information simply isn't recorded. In others it depends on officers choosing to disclose it.

That reluctance to disclose may itself tell us something. A 2025 University of Leicester-led study, published in The Police Journal, interviewed a small group of neurodivergent police officers and staff from across the UK. Some expressed worries that disclosing a formal diagnosis might restrict their careers or affect promotion. But they also repeatedly described the advantages their different ways of thinking brought to police work: noticing things colleagues missed, remembering information, making unexpected connections and approaching problems from unconventional directions. One officer said: "I make a great detective because I'm autistic."

Another went further. Police forces, they argued, were "missing a trick" by failing to seek out neurodivergent recruits deliberately. Pair a neurodivergent officer with a neurotypical colleague and, in their words, "you'll have a dream team."

Detective fiction has always been fascinated by brilliant outliers: from Holmes and Poirot to Monk, Saga Norén, Lisbeth Salander and, more recently, neurodivergent detectives such as George Cross and Patience Evans. Their minds don’t simply work better than everyone else’s. They work differently. And many of the qualities associated with that difference are peculiarly useful to a detective: the ability to bracket emotional noise in favour of logical analysis, identify patterns and inconsistencies, retain unusual amounts of detail, sustain intense focus, resist conventional assumptions and stick with a line of inquiry long after others have given up.

Another recent example, BBC TV’s Ludwig, offers a new twist on the idea: a celebrated puzzle-setter with autistic traits who assumes the identity of his missing detective twin and discovers that his puzzle-solving mind is remarkably well suited to murder investigation. We’ve come a long way from wheeling in charlatan “psychic” consultants, and it’s exciting to imagine a future in which neurodivergent traits are increasingly understood as part of a particular cognitive profile, rather than simply a liability or disability.

This idea of a policing “dream team”—a formidable pairing of a neurotypical whose exceptionalism comes from a depth of experience, and a neurodivergent who sees and perceives the world differently—is the engine that powers my Lennox & Blackwood series.

Olivia Blackwood is the grenade I’ve lobbed into the white patriarchal monoculture of the Met: she’s queer, mixed race and has ADHD. I’ve tried to show how her neurodivergent traits both enhance her investigative instincts and make aspects of the job, and life around it, more difficult. As a senior officer sarcastically suggests in the first book, The Whispering Bones: ‘Is there anyone who doesn’t have ADHD, these days?’ Blackwood quickly bats this back: ‘Around ninety-five per cent of UK adults, sir. Although a fair chunk of them will be undiagnosed, high-functioning.’

Blackwood begins the series as a mid-thirties PC, but she’s mentored up to DC level by Oswald Lennox, a DCI in his early fifties. Lennox is a precise operator with a fearsome investigative reputation and is at first reluctant to work with such a messy, unfiltered character. But their methods dovetail, and after working the harrowing case at the centre of The Whispering Bones, they find common ground in a past tragedy that runs through the series. In the second novel, The Vanishing Room, that symbiosis deepens, and so do the stakes.

At the start of The Vanishing Room, Blackwood receives a commendation in front of her policing peers, and chooses the moment to state her neurodivergence, loud and proud, saying that she’s been called many things, including ‘difficult’, ‘hard work’ and ‘mental’, but raises her award to make the point that ‘being different doesn’t have to be a weakness. It can also be a strength… Here’s to the power of diversity. To difference!’

Meanwhile, Lennox is facing his own personal crisis: memory gaps, hand tremors, uncharacteristic lapses of judgement. As the tests point towards an unthinkable prognosis, he’s forced to adapt his own methods and hide his compromises in a way that resembles the social masking behaviour adopted by some neurodivergent people to help them navigate the neurotypical world.

The characters face a new central case in each book, and there’s also that shared tragedy running underneath: Blackwood's own unsolved mystery, the disappearance of her childhood best friend Abigail, more than a decade cold. It’s the one case Lennox couldn’t solve as a DI, and as Blackwood revisits the disappearance with her new-found police powers, both are drawn back into the darkness. Where the thread leads, and what it could cost each of them to keep pulling it, is where the series is heading.

I didn’t want to present ADHD and neurological difference as colour: a tic, a running joke, a superpower, a way of making a character quirky. Blackwood's brain is the reason she's good at the job. She scatters her attention wide enough to catch connections a more linear thinker would miss; she also can't face a spreadsheet without wanting to climb out of her own skin. Both things are true at once, and neither cancels the other out.

So, this is Lennox and Blackwood: one detective whose difference is lifelong and increasingly claimed as a strength, another whose mind may be starting to fail him in ways he can't control or reverse. They're both just trying to keep functioning, and increasingly, they can only do it together.

If policing is beginning to recognise that neurological difference can be an investigative strength, then the question goes beyond how neurodivergent officers can be accommodated within an institution built around a neurological norm. It becomes a question of what policing might be missing when it expects everyone within that institution to think in broadly the same way.

Crime fiction worked this out a long time ago. The best detective in the room is often the one looking at the same evidence as everybody else and seeing something entirely different. It seems policing fact may finally be catching up with fiction.

The Vanishing Room by Andrew Lowe (Vinci Books) Out Now.

A British crime thriller in which a child’s disappearance from a locked London home leads two mismatched detectives to a predator who's spent years perfecting his method. Police procedural partnership, abduction suspense and a duel of wills with a killer who's always one step ahead. Love Builds the Strongest Cages. A young boy has disappeared from his London home. No sign of forced entry. No witnesses. No trace. Just an empty house and parents crazed with fear. When the investigation is linked to a horrific discovery beneath a derelict Victorian mansion, DCI Oswald Lennox and DC Olivia Blackwood realise they're up against a methodical predator who's been perfecting his lethal craft for years. Every hour that passes brings the missing boy closer to an unthinkable fate. Lennox is struggling with lapses in memory and focus. Blackwood’s impulsive streak threatens to derail a career that's only getting started. As the pair close in, the killer makes his boldest move yet, turning the case into a battle of wills that neither detective can afford to lose. For some monsters, death isn't enough.

The Whispering Bones and The Vanishing Room, books 1 and 2 in the Lennox & Blackwood series, are out now, published by Vinci Books. The Holloway Screamer, book 3, is out in February 2027. A prequel novella, The Rising Silence, is available in October 2026.

2026 Petrona Award Shortlist

 

Outstanding crime fiction from Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden shortlisted for the 2026 Petrona Award

Seven impressive crime novels from Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden have been shortlisted for the 2026 Petrona Award for the Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year. The shortlist is announced today, Thursday 24 September and is as follows:

Snæbjörn Arngrímsson - One True Word tr. Larissa Kyzer (Pushkin Vertigo, Iceland)

Stella Blómkvist - Murder Tide tr. Quentin Bates (Corylus Books, Iceland)

Jón Atli Jónasson - Broken tr. Quentin Bates (Corylus Books, Iceland)

Ørjan N Karlsson - Into Thin Air tr. Ian Giles (Orenda Books, Norway)

John Ajvide Lindqvist - The Writing in the Water tr. Michael Meigs (Amazon Crossing, Sweden)

Satu Rämö - The Grave in the Ice tr. Kristian London (Zaffre, Finland)

Antti Tuomainen - The Winter Job tr. David Hackston (Orenda Books, Finland)

The winning title will be announced on 22 October 2026.

The Petrona Award is open to crime fiction in translation, either written by a Scandinavian author or set in Scandinavia, and published in the UK in the previous calendar year.

The judges’ comments on the shortlist:

There were 28 entries for the 2026 Petrona Award from six countries (Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Norway and Sweden). This year’s shortlist sees Iceland represented with three novels, Finland with two, and Norway and Sweden with one novel each. The judges selected the shortlist from a strong pool of candidates with the seven shortlisted authors including two previous Petrona Award winners: Satu Rämö and Antti Tuomainen.

Independent publishers Corylus Books and Orenda Books both have two entries on the shortlist with Corylus’s both being translated by Quentin Bates. Amazon Crossing, Pushkin Vertigo and Zaffre have one entry apiece.

For Snæbjörn Arngrímsso, Jón Atli Jónasson and Ørjan N Karlsson, this is their first novel in English translation and for John Ajvide Lindqvist this is his first crime novel in translation.

The sub-genres of the shortlisted novels range from comedy to noir with the police procedural being particularly well represented this year.

As ever, we are extremely grateful to the translators whose expertise and skill have allowed readers to access these outstanding examples of Scandinavian crime fiction, and to the publishers who continue to champion and support translated fiction.

Further information can be found on the Petrona Award website: http://www.petronaaward.co.uk.

Extract from The Butterfly House

When she realised Gerard wasn’t beside her, Violeta gave a start. Half asleep, she stretched out a hand and touched the sheets: they were still warm, so he’d not been long gone. Perhaps he’d gone to the bathroom or to get a glass of water, she thought: after all, her own mouth was parched. A glance at her watch confirmed it was still quite early, and instinctively she turned her head and looked towards the window. From the mattress that acted as a bed and rested directly on the wooden floorboards, Violeta glimpsed the grey light of day that encouraged you to take things slowly, and, turning over, she closed her eyes intending to sleep a while longer.

* * * 

The previous night he’d told her he’d only been living for four months in that down-at-heel mansion in the district of Vallcarca. The house, known by the nickname of the ‘butterfly house’, because of the brightly coloured Lepidoptera decorating the garden, was one of the many abandoned houses in the area transformed into squats by the anti-system movement in order to protest against property speculation in Barcelona. Nobody could remember who had put the butterflies there, but, as they were plastic, they’d survived the passage of time and become part and parcel of the garden. For years, the owners of the big house that, if one could believe the inscription on the façade, dated from the beginning of the twentieth century, had allowed the building to slowly crumble in the hope they’d get the necessary permissions to demolish it and replace it with a modern apartment block, a fate that, if nobody got in the way, would be the lot of most of the surrounding mansions. Some had lost their roofs and most supporting walls, and only a couple were intact enough to be habitable, even if in the most precarious conditions. With their slash-and-burn aesthetic and incendiary disenchantment, the squatters had taken apart tiled roofs, rebuilt walls, slotted in cables to siphon off electricity from street lighting, and covered the main façades with cartoons and political slogans. A dearth of green fingers had turned gardens into wild spaces, and, from the street, the tall, unpruned trees and ubiquitous weeds broadcast the state of neglect into which the buildings and land had lapsed. Rubbish piled up in gardens, and only in summer, when mosquitoes, flies and the stench became intolerable, did bouts of cleaning and excursions to waste-containers become more frequent.

The bedroom where Gerard had parked himself was cold and on the small side. It was in the attic, a long way from the main room where the squatters met to discuss politics, listen to music, drink beer and smoke joints. Like most of them, he too had screwed a chain on the door to make sure that one of the strangers continually going in and out of the squat didn’t rummage through his belongings. Not that he owned anything of value, apart from his laptop that he always carried with him, as a precaution, but everyone knew that now and then items of clothing went missing, as did packets of cigarettes and condoms.

You could see the mountain of Tibidabo from his bedroom window, and in the foreground, the rubble wastelands the large plots had become after the grand houses had been demolished. These wastelands ran down to the stanchions of Vallcarca bridge, some two hundred metres from the butterfly house, and demonstrated how much speculation and a quick-buck culture had changed the look of the neighbourhood. Now and then the Mossos were ordered to clear out one of the buildings and the heavy brigade descended and did its worst. In solidarity with their evicted comrades or under attack from the anti-riot police, the squatters then created an uproar that ended in street-fighting in the city centre, with baton charges, arrests, improvised barricades, burning containers and the windows of banks and shops smashed to smithereens.

Unlike Violeta, Gerard had yet to be arrested by the Mossos. Whenever there was a shit-show, Gerard tried to scarper and when that wasn’t possible, he made sure he wasn’t in the front line so as not to draw attention to himself.

‘In fact, I only came to live in this house because I needed a free pad where I could study and not have my father on my back all the time,’ he’d confessed to Violeta.

Gerard had only one year to go before he received a joint degree in maths and physics, and, with his first-class grades, he was convinced it would be easy for him to get a grant to enrol for a doctorate at Edinburgh University, in the very same department where Professor Peter Higgs had discovered the elementary particle that bore his name. In the course of his degree, Gerard had specialised in the Higgs boson and had the opportunity to be part of one of the teams experimenting with the particle collider on the Universitat Autónoma campus, and, as he told Violeta, he had high hopes of working one day with the British physicist’s students on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.

‘So you’ll be going to Scotland next year?’ asked Violeta, hardly delighted by the prospect.

‘I hope so. But Edinburgh isn’t that far…’ added Gerard with a big smile.

While she killed time and made up her mind whether to stay a bit longer in the house or hit the road, Violeta found a packet of cigarettes and lit up. She’d not eaten anything and the smoke and nicotine made her stomach feel queasy, so she stubbed it out after a couple of puffs. She’d slept very little, smoked a lot and drunk over the odds, and felt rather hung over. Wondering whether it might do her good to drink something hot before leaving, she headed to the kitchen intending to brew up some tea.

Violeta was scouring the cupboards looking for an infusion to help deal with her queasy guts when she was startled by shouts from the garden. A voice was shouting for help. She rushed to the front door, and when she opened it she was shocked to see it was Gerard who was calling.

‘There’s a dead woman in the garden,’ she heard him mumble. ‘I think she’s been murdered.’

The Butterfly House by Teresa Solana (Corylus Books)

No money, no future - a motive for murder? The economic crisis has hit Barcelona hard, and a personal crisis might be about to hit Deputy Inspector Norma Forrester's family. When a body is found in the grounds of a former grand villa,now a student squat, Norma finds the case uncomfortably close to home. The downturn has turned the city into a breeding ground for crime, or is the motive more personal? Unable to stay away, although this case may represent a conflict of interest, Norma can't even count on the support of her forensic pathologist husband Octavi, who has more than enough to cope with following a major incident at the city's Prat Airport. When a face from his past appears, he and Norma are faced with choices and conflicts - just as her focus should be on finding the killer.

Coastal Crime 2027

 Crime writer starts new chapter as Coastal Crime announces 2027 date

Crime author Alex Stone publishes her latest thriller, The Jealous Girl, and launches a major new festival in the South: Coastal Crime.

Crime writer Alex Stone is preparing for a major new chapter this autumn - the publication of her latest psychological thriller, The Jealous Girl, and the launch of a new crime fiction festival.

Coastal Crime – The South's Crime Writing Festival takes place on Saturday 6 March 2027 at the Leonardo Royal Hotel Southampton Grand Harbour, bringing some of the biggest names in crime fiction together with emerging authors, aspiring writers, and readers for a day dedicated to the genre by the sea.

Festival founder Alex Stone was awarded a Katie Fforde Bursary in 2019 and published her debut thriller The Perfect Daughter with Boldwood Books in 2021. Her new Dorset-set psychological thriller, The Jealous Girl, is published by Boldwood Books on 10 September.

Alex Stone said: “It feels particularly appropriate that, just as The Jealous Girl is about to reach readers, Coastal Crime is beginning its first chapter.'

“Writing can often be a solitary profession, which is one of the reasons I'm so passionate about bringing writers and readers together. Coastal Crime is about celebrating the authors people already love, helping readers discover brilliant new voices, and creating a community where anyone with a passion for crime fiction feels welcome.”

The inaugural Coastal Crime programme is packed with panels exploring topics from reinventing the whodunnit, coastal noir, and adapting novels for screen.

Featured authors whose books have been adapted for screen include Sarah Pinborough, with the Netflix smash, Behind Her Eyes, Luke Jenning, whose books inspired the global sensation Killing Eve, TM Logan, whose The Holiday was adapted by Ch5 starring Jill Halfpenny, and New York Times bestselling screenwriter and novelist M J Arlidge, whose book was adapted for ITV’s Innocent.

Other bestselling authors include the award-winning Vaseem Khan, who was commissioned by the Ian Fleming Estate as an official author of the James Bond spin offs, featuring Q.

Journalist turned author Jackie Kabler also stars. Jackie worked as a news correspondent for the BBC, ITV and GMTV before writing bestsellers including The Perfect Couple and The Happy Family, selling over a million copies.

Sarah Pearse, Heidi Perks, Antony Johnston and Ava Glass also feature in a programme of talks, panels and opportunities for readers to meet new, emerging authors.

Alex said: “We’re creating a festival that celebrates bestselling names while championing new voices.”

Alex also runs an Author Events Academy, which has informed Coastal Crime’s dedicated Industry Hub, which will also run alongside the main festival.

The hub is aimed at aspiring and established writers, with sessions on breaking into the genre, understanding publishing routes, building visibility, mastering research, and pitching to agents, with expert contributors, including UK NetGalley Director Stuart Evers, on building a sustainable and visible writing career.

The hub also features forensic scientist Jo Millington, whose team has advised on major TV productions including Silent Witness, and Graham Bartlett, a former senior police officer turned bestselling author.

Writers will gain direct industry perspective from Curtis Brown Creative, sharing what agents are really looking for and how to approach submissions with confidence, alongside additional publishing professionals and specialists offering guidance across craft, research and career development.

A limited number of one-to-one appointments with agents and editors are now available to book.

Alex said: “Developing new, aspiring and emerging writers is something of a passion of mine. I’ve been through the process of dreaming of being a writer to published author. My Author Events Academy provides online workshops and development opportunities for writers, so that expertise and learning have really helped shape what we feel is an inspirational and practical day at Coastal Crime.”

The day concludes with a relaxed drinks reception, to meet authors and fellow crime fans.

Alex’s latest book The Jealous Girl explores toxic relationships, obsession and revenge. The novel follows Kirsty, whose obsession with the woman who has replaced her in her former boyfriend's life draws her into a web of family secrets, lies and ultimately something much darker. 

Dorset's dramatic coastline has long provided inspiration and settings for Alex's psychological thrillers, making the creation of a major crime writing festival on the South Coast a natural progression for the author.

Coastal Crime takes place on Saturday 6 March 2027 at the Leonardo Royal Hotel Southampton Grand Harbour. Early Bird tickets with 25% off are available until 31 October.

For tickets and further information please visit the website.

Death and Detection: Exploring Golden Age Crime Fiction,

Every Spring Christ Church hosts a Special Interest Event, where a group of specialists discuss the chosen topic in a series of lectures during the four-day event. Accommodation is provided in buildings of architectural and historical interest which reflect the different centuries since the college's foundation. All meals are included and are prepared under the direction of the college's Executive Head Chef and are served in the magnificent Tudor Hall. In 2027 they will be hosting 'Death and Detection: Exploring Golden Age Crime Fiction' taking place from the 8/4/27. 

 

Ticket information can be found here.

McIlvanney Prize Shortllist announced

 

BLOODY SCOTLAND REVEALS THE FINALISTS FOR 

THE McILVANNEY PRIZE 2026 

sponsored by the Glencairn Glass

Winner to be presented at 5pm on Friday 18 September 2026

This year the McIlvanney Prize is being judged by well-known broadcasters, Nicola Meighan and Sally Magnusson and crime reviewer, Gordon McGhie. Today they reveal the books they have selected as finalists and why:

Tariq Ashkanani - The Hollow Boys (Viper)

‘A powerful evocation of small town America and a deftly handled plot with an impossibly chilling mystery at its heart.’

Gavin Bell - 138 Main Street (S&S)

‘A genuinely unputdownable serial killer novel. We loved the originality and the sheer scale (both geographical and imaginative) of this thriller.’

Frances Crawford - A Bad, Bad Place (Transworld)

‘A bold, vital and original voice in Scottish crime writing. Full of wit and humanity, the characters stay with you long after you put the novel down.’

Philip Miller - The Diary of Lies (Polygon)

‘Absolutely beautiful prose evoking the Fife Coast and Edinburgh under snow. A truly exquisite sense of pace and a strong female lead character.’

Zoë Rankin - The Vanishing Place (Viper)

‘A gripping story about a forgotten family, alone and vulnerable in the New Zealand wilderness. We loved the strong characterisation in this compelling debut.’

Tariq Ashkanani was the winner of the McIlvanney Prize 2025 and also won the Bloody Scotland Debut Prize in 2022. He is one of the most established names on the list, which includes two debut authors – Frances Crawford and Zoë Rankin – who are also shortlisted for the Bloody Scotland Debut Prize, the latest book by Gavin Bell (who has previously written as Mason Cross and Alex Knight) and Philip Miller who appears on the McIlvanney shortlist for the first time. 

It’s also a triumph for indie publishers with Viper (Profile) appearing twice and Polygon (Birlinn) ensuring that indies dominate the list of finalists. 

Kirsty Nicholson, Head of Marketing at awards sponsor Glencairn Crystal, said:

“We’re thrilled to once again be part of the McIlvanney Prize and to celebrate the incredible talent at the heart of Scotland’s crime-writing community. This year’s finalists have delivered stories that intrigue, thrill and captivate, showcasing the imagination and originality that make this crime fiction prize so special. We’ll be raising a Glencairn Glass to every finalist as we look forward to discovering who takes home this year’s prize. Congratulations to all the shortlisted authors and the best of luck!”

The presentation of both prizes will take place in the Church of the Holy Rude at 5pm on Friday 18 September before a grand procession led by the two winners and guest programmer Denise Mina to her event with Lee Child at The Albert Halls. 

Derek Byrne on the Boy He Didn’t Trust.

Before I wrote Pretty Boy Red, I found myself drawn to writing from the perspective of a boy who was not entirely innocent. His name was Troy, the central character from my first novel Shotline. He seemed vulnerable until the moment he became dangerous. To get into his head I had to enter a different mental space, tripping along in a kind of stream-of-consciousness where madness was never far away. It was fun in a reckless sort of way, but I didn’t really think this kind of ruleless writing would see the light of day. Shotline has never been published, but the character Troy was knocking around in my head waiting for another chance. And it came. 

My attachment to Australia stretches back decades, along with a fascination for those quirky crime cases rooted in the landscape – kidnappings, murders, people vanishing without trace into the vastness. In June 2022, I read a news report from Perth in Western Australia: boys as young as fourteen had been transferred from Banksia Hill Youth Detention Centre to the adult prison at Casuarina, after they’d left their own facility unfit for habitation. There was an outcry. Children in an adult prison. Opinions divided. Some argued they deserved it; others that they were victims of a system that had failed them. Out of that tension, the character Joel Brady was born. Fourteen years old, nicknamed “Psycho” for his violent outbursts, he is awaiting trial for a crime so grave that he is to be judged in adult court before the public. Although inspired by contemporary events, I chose to set the story back in the late 80s early 90s, when I lived in Australia and was immersed in youth culture. This was a pre-digital world: no mobile phones, networked computing confined largely to academic and official settings. Distance, silence, and institutional opacity allowed dark undercurrents to fester, the kind that would later surface in crimes such as the Snowtown murders and backpacker murders. 

Joel is part of a cohort transferred into the wing of a harsh adult prison. I imagined a setting like Fremantle Gaol in Western Australia, closed in 1991, with its slopping out, rats, dirty brick walls and imposing gatehouse entrance, the site of a violent riot in 1988 in which guards were taken hostage. The aim was to place these boys under relentless pressure. 

The story begins when Joel catches sight of an adult prisoner who seems to recognise him, triggering a memory buried deep in his subconscious. There can be no contact between adult and juvenile inmates, but Joel senses a creeping menace behind the walls and corridors of the wing – a smell he seems to recognize, a name scratched onto a wall, a drawing shoved under the door to his cell. When a prisoner goes missing, his imagination begins to fill in the gaps. 

The difficulty with Joel is not simply that he may be guilty. It’s that he may not be telling the truth, even to himself. Joel is awaiting trial for his role in a series of abductions. Hugh, one of the boys who survived, is called by the Crown to testify. The trial becomes a central tension in the novel, the clash between Joel and Hugh. Who is telling the truth? 

Joel has memory gaps. Fragments arrive out of sync, often in second person, as if he is watching someone else. “There is a difference between unwilling and unable,” his psychiatrist tells the court when questioned about Joel’s dissociative amnesia. Even inside prison, Joel’s version of events is not left unchallenged. His cellmate Glenn – initially an enemy – becomes one of the few steady points in Joel’s fractured world,pushing him towards truths he would rather avoid. And me, the writer – can I trust Joel? At times it feels as though he is leading me, not the other way round. 

And what of Troy? He gave me the clues to get inside Joel’s head, to explore that space, to understand what it would be like to be that boy standing in rooms created for adults: a dock cell, a corridor of stone, a slop-stained cell, wondering who he is supposed to be, swinging between crisis, submission, and defiance. Joel resists explanation. He withholds. He distorts. The only way to write Joel was to keep following him, even when I no longer knew where he was leading me. But that is the point. Joel was never meant to be fully understood, or fully believed. He was the boy I didn’t trust.

Pretty Boy Red by Derek Byrne (Eye Books) Out Now

Child prisoner Joel Brady is facing trial for murder. If he can survive that long. 'Vivid, complex, hard-hitting and compelling' Ray Robinson In the juvenile wing of a prison in Western Australia, fourteen-year-old Joel Brady - small, girly-voiced, nicknamed 'Psycho' - is awaiting trial for his role as sidekick to child abductor Marcus Welby. Joel still isn't sure what he did that last day at Welby's outback house of horror; his memory has blotted it out. Is his mind playing tricks in other respects too? Did he really see the malevolent Quentin, another of Welby's associates, in the adult wing of the prison? Or is Quentin a figment of his imagination, as Joel's lawyers insist? A more immediate priority is hiding from the rampaging cons who have escaped the adult wing, one of whom wants Joel's head. Will his cellmate Glenn, an arch-enemy who has become his first real friend, stay loyal? Set in an ultra-violent, alpha-male world where human connection is a double-edged sword, and interwoven with a gripping courtroom drama in which the truth about Welby's chilling set-up gradually emerges.

More information about the author can be found on his website. He can also be found on Instagram @Derek171923. On Facebook and on X@Bai39878353Paul.

The Idea Behind An Ordinary House by Rae Starling

In August 2006 – almost 20 years ago to the day that I’m writing this article – I was living in Germany and driving to collect my young children from a play party. The news came on the car radio with a lead headline about a girl who had suddenly appeared on a street in neighbouring Austria after being missing for eight years. The story sounded fantastical. Thinking my German must have let me down, I quickly tuned to an English-language radio station. What I thought I’d heard was confirmed. Natascha Kampusch hadn’t been seen since she vanished on her way to school at the age of ten. Now, as a resilient eighteen-year-old, she finally escaped from her captor.

World media went mad. Her first TV interview for ORF, the Austrian national broadcaster, aired in full in ten countries, and excerpts were shown in another one hundred and twenty.

Inspired by the case, I thought about writing a thriller that would explore the aftermath of a kidnap victim’s escape and the challenges facing them as they adjust to life outside. It felt like a sensitive issue that would need respectful handling and thorough research, so I enrolled on a PhD at the University of Birmingham.

My thesis title was: Hijacking Survivor Narratives: A Creative and Critical Study of Trauma Appropriation in Fiction. I examined topics in several disciplines, including trauma writing and post-traumatic stress disorder. However, within a month of starting my research, I read one academic article and two personal memoirs that made me rethink my approach.

(i)The article, by Fairleigh Gilmour, examined the media coverage of the ‘Kampusch’ case. Gilmour discovered that initially sympathetic reporting soon turned against the teenager. In Gilmour’s view, Natascha Kampusch received negative press because she did not present as the typical stereotype of a victim. Instead, she claimed her independence and seemed to hold a complex and contradictory attitude towards her abductor.

 Gilmour analysed 355 newspaper articles in English language newspapers from 2006 to 2010 and noted the occurrence of four story ‘angles’ to refer to Natascha Kampusch: the ‘mad’ woman (28% of coverage referred to Natascha Kampusch in this way); the ‘bad’ woman (15%); the ‘sex slave’ (19%); and the ‘virgin bride’ (16%).

The two memoirs that made me review my plans were written by Natascha Kampusch herself. (ii) In her first book, 3096 Days, she powerfully contests each of these stereotypes and (iii) in her second book, 10 Years of Freedom, published some eleven years after she escaped, she is still citing incidents of ongoing media intrusion and unwelcome attention from the public.

Sadly, since hearing what I thought was an unbelievable news story about Natascha Kampusch’s captivity and escape, I have heard of other women and girls – including Elizabeth Smart, Sarah Smith, Jaycee Dugard, Amanda Berry, Gina De Jesus, Michelle Knight, and Katy Morgan-Davies – who all suffered long-term abuse and captivity. I read memoirs by these survivors as well as the two by Natascha Kampusch. One point that several mentioned was the difficulty of readjusting afterwards under a media spotlight.

These memoirs, together with the Gilmour article, inspired me to write about how an individual's experience of crime might be rewritten by the media and social media. When we soak up true-crime headlines, we can sometimes forget about the effects of media sensationalism on the victims.

A recent example concerns the media coverage of the search for a missing Lancashire woman in January 2023.  (I won’t name her as she never had the opportunity for a right of reply to the coverage.) Social media platforms were rife with speculation and keyboard warriors flocked to the River Wyre, where she was last seen, to make videos and play at amateur sleuthing.

With their working hypothesis being undermined by the media and social media, the police divulged private details about the woman’s health, and some TV news channels invaded her family’s privacy. Although there was no survivor in this case – she had sadly drowned – the potentially traumatising effect of media intrusion on her family cannot be overlooked. 

In my thriller, An Ordinary House, a traumatised teenager finds his story sensationalised after rescue from years locked in a suburban house. As well as navigating lurid headlines and false allegations, he must suppress nightmarish memories of his ordeal to stop himself spiralling out of control. We see him face scrutiny not only from the media but also from detectives, lawyers, psychologists and social media keyboard warriors.

If you like dark thrillers, I hope you’ll give this one a go. 

Sources

(i)             Fairleigh Gilmour, ‘The Girl in the Cellar: Media Representations of Natascha Kampusch’, Current Issues in Criminal Justice, 25. 2 (2013), 645-666.

(ii)           Natascha Kampusch and Heike Gronemeier, 10 Years of Freedom (Berlin: Ullstein Buchverlage, 2017).

(iii)         Natascha Kampusch and Heike Gronemeier, 3096 Days (London: Penguin, 2010)

An Ordinary House by Rae Starling (Hera Books) Out 3^rd September 2026

We lived in a house on Beech Avenue. Outside-People say we're safe now. But one of us wants to go back. Back to that house and the darkness it held. Police raid an ordinary house in a quiet suburban street and find a traumatised teenager held captive with his family. They call him a survivor, but he doesn't know what to believe. His memories don't match what his siblings and the press tell him about his home. As he struggles to make sense of his new world, he must find and face the truth. With one of his siblings set on revenge, should he forget his family, or turn from victim to killer?

You can find more information about Rae Starling and her work on her website.

 Rae Starling can also be found on X @RachelSargeant3 on Instagram @raesargeant3 and on Facebook.