A Winter Grave: a chilling new mystery set in the Scottish highlands

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Confined to France and a 40 km radius from our home, I had to come up with a new idea, and so The Night Gate was conceived. A new adventure for Enzo Macleod, it has two timelines, one present day and one during the second world war, mainly set in and around Carennac and Saint-Céré, and other places I know well in France. One scene even takes place in the apartment above the garage which is now my music studio where, in reality during the war, many works of art from the Louvre were hidden from the Nazis!

A few years down the line and bee colonies have been disappearing in greater numbers all over the world. There are many reasons: changes in farming methods which have destroyed their natural foraging habitat; disease, often spread by unregulated transportation of bees around the world; the changing climate. But above all, a body of scientific evidence that points towards the use of a new breed of pesticides called neonicotinoids. So nearly half a century later, I find myself on the same list, with the same publisher as the man who I have always considered to be my first and most important mentor.He says: “I suppose I have perhaps a slightly louder voice than most people. But in the end I decided I couldn’t write about climate change in itself, that’s not a story you can manage in terms of a book.” Since retirement, one has developed a hobby of studying languages and taking university degrees in a whole range of arcane subjects, like quantum physics, and astronomy. The other has found part-time employment in an industry which makes use of his astonishing ability to absorb and remember facts. Mysteries To Die For in Thousand Oaks, California, closed its doors for the last time last week, while further north in the same State San Mateo’s independent Mystery bookstore, M is for Mystery, closed earlier this year. Readers in the USA have had to wait a long time to catch up with The Lewis Trilogy, but I’m glad to be able to tell you that The Lewis Man will be coming to the USA in 2014.

In A Winter Grave, Peter’s veteran Glasgow cop Cameron Brodie heads off to Kinlochleven in the West Highlands to investigate an unusual murder in an ice-bound village. The good news is that publication dates are bringing North America closer with the UK, Australia and New Zealand. I first developed a consciousness about the phenomenon of deaf-blindness after watching a TV ad appealing for money for a deaf-blind charity. I wondered what on earth it must feel like to be deaf AND blind. It was unthinkable. To lose both primary senses and become trapped within yourself, your own body becoming a prison confining you in a world of darkness and silence. It is with great sadness today that I have to record the passing of my friend and mentor Dr. Richard Ward.

ENTRY ISLAND wins French Literary Award

In doing so he conveyed to me the horrors of this process, and all the dangers that were, and are, being ignored by the biotech giants who are forcing their technologies upon us in relentless pursuit of profit, and with scant regard for the dangers to the environment and the human race. This very much shaped the story I told in my book. Those who are cutting funding to basketball, he says, are ignoring the widespread popularity of that game at grass roots level.

My latest book, A Silent Death, a brand new thriller set in the South of Spain near Gibraltar will be coming out in January in the UK and March in the USA and I will be touring both sides of the Atlantic to celebrate the launch. Below are the dates of the UK tour. (Details of my April trip to the USA and Canada will be coming soon.) UK TOUR The Flannan Isles are famous for their real-life hundred-year-old mystery of the three lighthouse keepers who went missing without trace. It’s a story that still captures the imagination, but the main draw for today’s tourist trips to the islands is bird-spotting. And in Coffin Road, on one such outing, the corpse in question is found and DS George Gunn is called in to investigate. Joe went on to advise me on further books in the China series, as well as in the Enzo Files series, and finally on “ Coffin Road”. A physical launch tour for the book was out of the question because of social distancing restrictions, so this year there was a whole new approach… a virtual tour undertaken from that very music studio. Interviews with journalists began in January and carried on into February and March. There is traditionally a launch party for the new book in London with all the top book reviewers having a meal in London with me and my publisher. This year it was replaced by a virtual launch and a hamper of specially chosen food, drink and delights from South West France, was delivered to the homes of the journalists. We then met up and enjoyed the fare together on a video call.My 1981 book, “The Man With No Face”, was set against Britain’s uncertainty about its future place in Europe. Ten years later my book, “The Noble Path”, followed refugees fleeing from war, taking to flimsy boats to cross treacherous bodies of water. Sound familiar? For the contemporary element of the story, I turned towards Canada where many Highlanders ended up. I had initially intended to use Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island as the centres of the contemporary crime story. But two coincidences changed my mind. But the genesis of Coffin Road, the book, came from a vision which has haunted me for a long time. I saw the vast expanse of Luskentyre beach on the Isle of Harris with dunes and mountains rising up all around and the clear turquoise ocean stretching into the distance. And in the midst of this breathtaking natural beauty a man dragging himself out of the water and staggering to his feet on the beach. Apparently the survivor of a boating accident, he remembers nothing about who he is, how he got there or what has happened.