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

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I had events at the arts festivals in Perth and Adelaide, travelled to Sydney and Brisbane – with an excursion to New Zealand – and was delighted to find that interest in the arts could hardly be higher. All my Perth events were played to full houses. Two thousand people turned up for my events in Adelaide – right across the road from a venue where the Scottish National Theatre was performing the James Plays to full, enthusiastic houses. Nearly 200 crammed into a library in Brisbane. People everywhere were incredibly friendly, all infused with what seemed to me like a natural sense of confidence and spirit. Peter said: “In the book I was following the Finnish model, they have nuclear power stations and bury the waste deep into the earth permanently and safely. It’s something I didn’t really touch on in the book, but I read with interest they have small modular nuclear reactors, things not much bigger than the room I’m sitting in and much cheaper to set up and run.”

When Sime arrives, it is only to discover that the wife of the victim, and prime suspect in his murder, is unaccountably familiar to him, even although they have never met…It was during this time that he spent several years in China, effectively training the top five hundred Chinese police officers in the latest Western policing techniques, and it was this connection that led to my first encounter with him in 1997. In January 2016 I will be on tour in the UK (details below) and in February/March I will be visiting Australia and New Zealand.

Cast Iron will be published in the UK on 12th January 2017 and I will be touring the UK visiting Glasgow Edinburgh, Perth, Norwich, Cambridge, Oxford, Manchester, and London. Most of us are helpless in the face of the multi-billion dollar fossil fuel industry which has spent tens of millions in the last decades spreading misinformation and casting doubt on the science behind the climate crisis.” Don’t Burn The World is a song written by the author and his lyricist collaborator, Dennis McCoy, as a plea for the future of the planet in the face of catastrophic climate change. 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. The two protagonists of the China Thrillers series are Margaret Campbell and Li Yan, two completely different people in every way possible. From their mindset to how they do their jobs, Yan and Campbell are two similar poles of a magnet; they can’t stand each other.

The Isle of Harris was calling me. It was the perfect place. And what better opportunity would I have to realise my vision for that opening scene of the man staggering to his feet, drenched an confused, than in one of the most dramatic and beautiful locations in the world? By the time I had returned in ’97 on that first research trip, English had become more widespread. Many restaurants were now featuring menus in English or Pinyin. And those ring roads were beginning to start filling up with more than taxis and buses and official vehicles. The great move away from the bicycle towards private cars was already underway.

The latest to fall by the wayside is Partners & Crime in New York City. P&C has just announced it is to close its doors, following in the fatal footsteps of another NYC independent, Murder Ink.So I despatched the manuscript to a metaphorical drawer – a file in my Dropbox which has spent the last fifteen years gathering dust in the ether. Join me at any of these events from anywhere in the world and hear me speak about the story behind “ The Night Gate” and the return of Enzo… But not long before the climate change conference in Glasgow, Peter – the former award-winning journalist – turned again to some of those reporter’s basic skills he has used over the years researching his novels to do some deeper study into the facts about climate change. She gets what she seeks when the Chinese police department calls her for six weeks to train the Beijing police. She happily accepts, hoping this trip will give her the solace she seeks. But things go differently than she hoped for right after she lands in China.