Showing results by narrator "David Monteath" in All Categories

Teenager Alison Doig disappeared from Kinloch more than 30 years ago under mysterious circumstances. Her reclusive family still live in a remote part of the Kintyre peninsula, amidst rumours of wrecking, smuggling and barbaric cruelty. Now rich American hotelier Alice Wenger has arrived in town, determined to punish those who made her suffer in the past. But someone has vowed to keep hidden sins concealed for ever. Daley’s team must race against time to expose long-held secrets and shameful lies before there are any more victims.

A short story from the British Library Crime Classic collection The Edinburgh Mystery. This short story features Clouston’s most popular private detective F.T. Carrington. A series of mysterious burglaries in Scotland’s Kinbuckie proves more of a challenge for the shrewd investigator than he thinks....

A busy practising barrister who also served as a judge, Cyril Hare also found time to publish nine detective novels and approximately 40 short stories, including Thursday’s Child, which takes the listener to the island of Cara, the west coast of Kintyre in Scotland. When a businessman from London tries to buy the island, the mysterious, lone inhabitant of the island’s interest is immediately piqued.

Private McAuslan, J.—the Dirtiest Soldier in the World (alias the Tartan Caliban)—demonstrates his unfitness for military service in this first volume of stories of life in a Scottish regiment. Unkempt, ungainly and unwashed, civilian listeners may regard him with shocked disbelief. But generations of ex-servicemen have hailed him with delight as a familiar friend—because every old soldier can remember a McAuslan!

Nobody loves an honest man, or that was what police sergeant Hamish Macbeth tried to tell newcomer Paul English. Paul attended church in Lochdubh. He told the minister, Mr. Wellington, that his sermons were boring. He told tweedy Mrs. Wellington that she was too fat. Angela Brody was told her detective stories were pap for the masses and it was time she wrote literature instead. He accused Hamish of having dyed his fiery red hair. He told Jessie Currie - who repeated all the last words of her twin sister - that she needed psychiatric help.

Seonaid Ferguson, a lady of Craiglocky Keep, is through with London's Marriage Mart. After learning she has the second sight, the haut ton attempts to exploit her abilities. Even though it means she condemns herself to spinsterhood, Seonaid sets a desperate course to rid herself of her gift turned curse. As she rushes home from England, a snowstorm strands her in a crowded inn with the last man she ever wished to see again. A handsome French baron who once thought her a courtesan. And just her misfortune, only he stands between her and certain harm.

DSI William Lorimer and his wife Maggie are taking their first extended holiday for the first time in years, and they're looking for an adventure. What better place than Zimbabwe, with its bustling cities and beautiful scenery? Back in Glasgow, PC Daniel Kohi, former inspector with the Zimbabwean police, finds himself uncomfortably close to a murder investigation. Why did the murdered man appear at Daniel's house just hours before he was killed? And how he is connected to the troubled family history of Netta Gordon, Daniel's dear friend and lodger?

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.

Detective Jack Knox is faced with a troubling case when a woman’s body is found on a beach near Edinburgh. Police match her to missing persons, because her personal effects have been swept out to sea. When she is finally identified, the victim’s last known movements are investigated. She was courted by a man who proves elusive, having evaded surveillance cameras. He has covered his tracks well. Was this her killer?

A student meets an untimely demise when she falls from Salisbury Crags in Edinburgh's Holyrood Park. Was she pushed? Whilst DI Jack Knox is picking through the lies of the victim's friends, he is called upon to help the narcotics division on the other side of the city. A drug dealer is dead and the squad is setting up a deadly sting. But without Knox and the clout he has among the criminal fraternity, they're unable to move against rival gangs.

DI Jack Knox's Edinburgh team are busy dealing with a series of violent rapes when a man is found murdered on a residential street. The detective splits the under-resourced squad and follows up the murder himself, quickly establishing that there is no shortage of individuals who would have wanted the man dead. The victim had secured private investments for NewTech, a video games company that fell foul of copyright law. A lot of serious people lost serious money. Whilst Knox treads on eggshells and traces the finances, the rest of the team focus on the rape.

Tony Banks and his comrades of the 2nd Battalion of the Parachute Regiment were highly trained, but nothing could prepare them for the intensity and ferocity of fighting to liberate the Falkland Islands. Plunged into a war of night attacks and vicious close-quarters combat, Banks and his fellow soldiers' fierce bravery and determination saw them through the bloodiest conflict British troops had faced in decades. Seventeen men died at Goose Green, a hard-fought battle the paras came close to losing.

Celebrated author John Heppel is known in Lochdubh as a self-important bore, prone to belittling the scribblings of the locals in his creative writing class. So when he's found dead, his mouth oozing ink, it seems a fitting fate. But for PC Hamish Macbeth the murder is more than a disruption to idyllic village life - especially when the media arrive, trailing in their wake DCI Heather Meikle, a maneater with a taste for bachelor police constables. Hamish must rekindle an old flame to escape her clutches and pull out all the stops to find the killer . . .

With a bike, a turbo trainer, and the right advice, you can beat anyone. No one but Graeme Obree has the clarity of vision to get to the heart of the "problem" of how to improve as a racing cyclist. His innovative approach took him to the top of world cycling, twice breaking the world hour record - a story picked up in his Hollywood biopic The Flying Scotsman. It can draw the same outstanding athletic performance from you.

An SS officer is found standing over the body of a comrade, a smoking pistol still in his hand, a murder in a place of murders. His pleas of innocence force a court martial and he knows that there is only one man in the camp capable of defending him; a Jewish prisoner called Manfred Meyer. Manfred Meyer is forced to build a defence for him in his court martial. Drawing on his years of experience as a criminal lawyer in Berlin, Meyer must unravel the deceit and interpret the lies that infect the concentration camp and work to have him found not guilty.

A dreich day for a crossing and a small ferry packed to the gills. A fracas when off loading leads to blood and tears. And one man sits dead at the wheel of the last remaining car. Macleod and McGrath return to Cromarty when a man is found dead at the wheel of his car on the small, local ferry. As the passengers are identified, the trail extends across the highlands and islands as past deeds are paid back in full. Can the now seasoned pair hunt down a killer before their butchery spreads across the land?

There’s not a cloud in Hamish Macbeth’s sky - just plenty of warm sunshine but not quite enough of the lovely Priscilla Halburton-Smythe. But as eight hopeful members of the Checkmate Singles Club converge on Tommel Castle Hotel for a week of serious matchmaking, the clouds roll in. The four couples, carefully matched by dating director Maria Worth, immediately dislike one another. And the arrival of Maria’s gross, greedy business partner, Peta, kills the last vestige of romance. And as love goes out the window, murder comes in the door.

In recent years, Billy Connolly has had more than his share of challenges - in 2013 he was diagnosed with prostate cancer (he's now been given the all clear); on the same day he was diagnosed with the early stages of Parkinson's disease. But being a determined 72-year-old, Billy won't let the illness put him off one more exploration of the country he knows and loves so well.

Bonnie Scotland, and she is Bonnie that’s for sure. A country with a rich and mysterious history. Strange land formations, ancient standing stone circles, and otherworldly scenery run from coast to coast. It is the land of the Celts and their folklore that includes stories of unicorns, shape shifting spirits, Kelpies, fairies, and monsters that swim in deep Lochs.

New Year's Eve should be a time for celebrating. A chance to spend time with loved ones and look forward to the year ahead. For DSI William Lorimer, however, this New Year's Eve will be one that he will never forget. Called to a house after gunshots are reported, the carnage he finds there will have a powerful impact on his life - leaving him questioning his future with Police Scotland.