At the beginning of 2023, A Winter Grave was published. It went to number 3 in the list of UK hardback bestsellers and number 1 in audiobooks! 

I keep insisting that I am going to retire from writing books in order to pursue other things, but as my friend, New York fashion designer Joseph Abboud said to me recently, “You can retire from what you do, but you can’t retire from who you are.” It seems that’s true. 

The last thing on my mind was writing a book, but the moment I turned down a contract from my publisher, and was free from the weight of expectation on my shoulders, an idea began percolating away. I couldn’t get it out of my mind. I began researching – my favourite thing – gathering material, reading, watching video documentaries. And in the end, I couldn’t stop myself… before long, I knew that there was a story I had to write. 

So yes, in 2024 there will be a new book. 

It will be published next September by Quercus’s riverrun imprint as usual. It’s called The Black Loch and perhaps the most exciting thing for long time readers of my work, it heralds the return of Fin Macleod, the main character in the Lewis Trilogy (The Blackhouse, The Lewis Man and The Chessmen). 

So now the Lewis Trilogy has become a tetralogy! 

The Black Loch

A MURDER
The body of eighteen-year-old TV personality Kathleen is found abandoned on a remote beach at the head of An Loch Dubh – the Black Loch – on the west coast of the Isle of Lewis. A swimmer and canoeist, it is inconceivable that she could have drowned.

A SECRET
Fin Macleod left the island ten years earlier to escape its memories. When he learns that his married son Fionnlagh had been having a clandestine affair with the dead girl and is suspected of her murder, he and Marsaili return to try and clear his name.

A TRAP
But nothing is as it seems, and the truth of the murder lies in a past that Fin would rather forget, and a tragedy at the cages of a salmon farm on East Loch Roag, where the tense climax of the story finds its resolution.

Look out for 

Look out for
The Black Loch
in September 2024

Ot better still, pre-order your copy here…