Showing results by narrator "Steve Worsley" in All Categories

It’s not going well for NE Division: half the force is off sick, all leave’s been cancelled, someone’s firebombed a migrant hostel and there’s a massive climate change protest march happening this Saturday. With officers dropping like flies, Detective Inspector Logan McRae has to kick off a major murder investigation with a skeleton staff of misfits, idiots and malingerers – AKA: DS Steel’s team – until the top brass can arrange backup from other divisions.

Back when they were students, Simon and his friend, Ray, had dreams to become rock stars. Fifteen years later their mid-30s are bearing down fast, and they're having to accept a less glamorous life. Ray takes refuge from his responsibilities by living a virtual existence in online games. People say he needs to grow up, but everybody finds their own way of coping. But for Simon it's serial murder, mass slaughter and professional assassination.

In the heart of Scotland's whisky country, a killer lurks amongst the casks. When renowned distillery guide Hamish Durie drops down dead during a whisky tasting, seemingly poisoned by his family's own liquid gold, DCI Bone is thrust into a world where tradition and treachery collide. Peeling back the layers of deception, Bone uncovers a toxic blend of deep rooted family feuds, corporate back-stabbings, and a sinister connection to Glasgow's underworld kingpin, Frankie Feelan.

From the No. 1 bestselling author of THE MISSING AND THE DEAD comes the short novel: 22 DEAD LITTLE BODIES, plus two short stories: STRAMASH and DI STEEL'S BAD HEIR DAY, and a novella: THE 45% HANGOVER, all featuring his most popular characters – DS Logan McRae and DCI Roberta Steel. They say ‘small is beautiful’, but as Stuart MacBride demonstrates in these four tales, it can also be dark, violent, disturbing, and sometimes really quite rude.

Welcome to the Misfit Mob... It's where Police Scotland dumps the officers it can't get rid of but wants to: the outcasts, the troublemakers, the compromised. Officers like DC Callum MacGregor, lumbered with all the boring go-nowhere cases. So when an ancient mummy turns up at the Oldcastle tip, it's his job to find out which museum it's been stolen from. But then Callum uncovers links between his ancient corpse and three missing young men, and life starts to get a lot more interesting.

The disappearance of a three-year-old girl from her isolated Highland home one summer shook the nation. A massive police search involving divers in the loch and dogs combing the moorland and mountains had failed to find Lily Masterton. Three years later, the world may have forgotten the blond-haired girl with the big blue eyes, but her grief-stricken parents hire Private Investigator Teàrlach Paterson—an expert in finding missing children—to bring their precious Lily home. But this is no ordinary family struck by tragedy.

When fire crews are called to a blaze at the home of a Kilwinnoch GP they make a grisly discovery: the charred remains of the doctor and his entire family. But is this a tragic accident or an horrific, calculated murder? DCI Duncan Bone's worst fears are confirmed when a cryptic message is found at the scene hinting at a grudge against the medical profession.

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. Three-year-old David Reid's body is discovered in a ditch: strangled, mutilated and a long time dead. And he's only the first. There's a serial killer stalking the Granite City, and the local media are baying for blood. Soon the dead are piling up in the morgue almost as fast as the snow on the streets, and Logan knows time is running out. More children are going missing. More are going to die.

When the brutally murdered body of a local geography teacher is discovered at Kilwinnoch’s famous beauty spot, Blood Water Falls, the community is rocked to its core. For DCI Duncan Bone, the killing appears to be an open and shut case. But it’s not long before a sinister clue unleashes dark and deadly forces, blowing the investigation wide open, and putting Bone and his team in grave danger.

Before the Swallows Come Back is a story of love, found family, and redemption that will break your heart and have it soaring time and time again as you sit on the edge of your seat desperately hoping.

When DCI Duncan Bone is contacted by a terminally ill psychiatric patient and given clues linking a 40-year-old unsolved murder to high-profile public figures, he finds himself locked into a conspiracy at the very heart of the Scottish criminal and political establishment. With his bosses stonewalling the investigation, lives under threat, and his career on the line, Bone faces a race against time to hunt down a group of men who will stop at nothing to cover their murderous crime. Can DCI Bone catch the killer before the killing starts again?

The number one best-selling detective series from the award-winning Stuart MacBride continues in this second crime thriller. It's summertime in Scotland: the sun is shining, the sky is blue and people are dying.... It's summertime in the Granite City: the sun is shining, the sky is blue and people are dying.... It starts with Rosie Williams, a prostitute, stripped naked and beaten to death down by the docks - the heart of Aberdeen's red light district. For DS Logan McRae, it's a bad start to another bad day.

It is 1935, and the deaths of Isabella Ruxton and Mary Rogerson would result in one of the most complex investigations the world had ever seen. The gruesome murders captured worldwide attention, with newspapers keeping the public enthralled with all the gory details. But behind the headlines was a different, more important story: the groundbreaking work of Scottish forensic scientists who developed new techniques to solve the case and shape the future of scientific criminal investigation.

When a morning jogger discovers a dead body on the outskirts of Cullenbrae, a remote hamlet deep in the heart of the Campsie Fells, DCI Bone and his team are called out to what appears to be a straightforward hit and run incident. But the victim’s horrific injuries and a murder weapon found at the scene suggest a far more sinister motive.

The new Logan McRae thriller set in gritty Aberdeen, from the bestselling author of Cold Granite and Dark Blood. 'You will raise money for the safe return of Alison and Jenny McGregor. If you raise enough money within fourteen days they will be released. If not, Jenny will be killed.' Alison and Jenny McGregor – Aberdeen's own mother-daughter singing sensation – are through to the semi-finals of TV smash-hit Britain's Next Big Star.

Detective Chief Inspector Roberta Steel got caught fitting up Jack Wallace - that's why they demoted her and quashed his sentence. Now he's back on the streets, and women are being attacked again. Wallace has to be responsible, but if Detective Sergeant Steel goes anywhere near him, his lawyers will get her thrown off the force for good. The Powers That Be won't listen to her, not after what happened last time. According to them, she's got more than enough ongoing cases to keep her busy.

A wildlife photographer plummets to his death above Fingal's Cave. A young fisherman vanishes without trace. The body of a marine scientist is pulled from the sea, his last recording a haunting piece of evidence. Three seemingly unconnected events on the Isle of Mull draw Private Investigator Teàrlach Paterson back to his childhood home. Hired by the photographer's widow to investigate her husband's death, Teàrlach quickly unravels a tangled web of family feuds, forbidden love and deep betrayals.

When the chief suspect in the notorious Peek-a-boo cop killer case blew himself up, almost taking lead investigator DCI Duncan Bone with him, the psychologically damaged detective thought his days on the force were over. But when another PC is abducted and murdered in the same deranged Peek-a-boo fashion, Bone is persuaded to return to lead the new investigation. But as Bone and his team hunt a copycat killer, and with time running out before yet another cop is slain, Bone’s terrifying past returns to tear open old wounds and push him to very edge of the abyss.

Detective Inspector Logan McRae is finally getting back on his feet after the events of the last few years. Putting things behind him. Getting better.… But it was never going to last. A body turns up on the outskirts of Aberdeen: burned from the neck up, hands chained behind the back. More murders follow - all gruesome, and with only one obvious connection. The similarities between the real-life killings and the plot of a best-selling novel about witchcraft seem more than coincidental, but the more Logan digs the more dangerous and blurred the line between fact and fiction becomes.

Who will be next? When the body of a local talent show winner is discovered on the eve of headlining Kilwinnoch’s annual Civic Week celebrations, it throws the festivities into chaos, and threatens to tear the close-knit community apart.