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The Coffinmaker’s Garden: From the No. 1 Sunday Times best selling crime author comes his latest gripping new 2021 suspense thriller

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A stormy night in Clachmara, a boat floundering near an unstable cliff, a helicopter attempting rescue, a rumble and disaster as the cliff collapses revealing the Coffinmakers Garden. Di Malcolmson (aka Mother) of Oldcastle Division, Ash Henderson and Dr Alice McDonald of LIRU (Lateral Investigative and Review Unit) investigate and make further horrifying discoveries. As if this isn’t bad enough there also a child killer to catch.

The story is about the murder of young boys and as we're introduced to this horrific news item, Ash finds himself at a row of houses by the sea, all being speedily taken by the storm that's eroding the coast and one house in particular hides a gruesome secret. The book begins in the coastal village of Clachmara ,which due to coastal erosion is slowly falling into the North Sea. A massive storm is blowing and a fishing boat is in trouble with the Coastguard helicopter in attendance.. Single parent Margaret Compton is horrified to realise that her young son Alfie is missing, a lad with a fascination for helicopters. Rushing into the storm she finds him watching the rescue attempt on the cliffs next to an abandoned house, Part of the cliff falls into the sea ,just after Margaret has snatched Alfie to safety and a cache of human bones is exposed.. But university and I did not see eye to eye, so off I went to work offshore. Like many all-male environments, working offshore was the intellectual equivalent of Animal House, only without the clever bits. Swearing, smoking, eating, more swearing, pornography, swearing, drinking endless plastic cups of tea... and did I mention the swearing? But it was more money than I'd seen in my life! There's something about being handed a wadge of cash as you clamber off the minibus from the heliport, having spent the last two weeks offshore and the last two hours in an orange, rubber romper suit / body bag, then blowing most of it in the pubs and clubs of Aberdeen. And being young enough to get away without a hangover.The strength of MacBride’s books for me has always been the way they combine violent and disturbing storylines with humour. The Logan McRae novels are police procedurals, and follow the logic of an investigation, but the characters are all heightened, funny, odd, with their own idiosyncratic motives, from lust for power, to vanity, to laziness. I know MacBride has a legion of fans and I would have liked to join them but, although the plot was good, particularly at the beginning, the execution of it let it down. I do love a serial killer and I do love writing about fictional serial killers,” he says, “but I cannot stand reading about real ones because I can’t get past the fact these are real people, and the people they kill never get remembered – it’s always the person who does the killing. I love writing and reading about made-up ones because no one was hurt in the production of a book.”

Ash and Alice actually have a falling out in this book and much of the action happens while Ash is working with another member of the Lateral Investigation and Review Unit (LIRU) or with his old police buddy D.I.Shifty Morrow. Henry the Scottie dog accompanies them and caused the most stress for me in the course of the story. As a massive storm batters the Scottish coast, Gordon Smith's home is falling into the North Sea. But the crumbling headland has revealed what he's got buried in his garden: human remains.MacBride's books have always been ambitiously plotted and firmly character-driven ... They are only getting richer and more rewarding. The Blood Road is his best work yet' Scotland on Sunday

Oh wow! button-down the hatches because this is one hell of a stormy ride as the sea batters and erodes the coastline, taking with it the gardens and homes perched on top. There hasn’t been a hole deep enough to hide the horrors of the coffin maker’s true nature as his victims remains tumble into the sea. He of course is nowhere to be found. The specialised team are established characters from previous books, but this was my first encounter with them. I felt very comfortable with them as they felt natural, with no stiffness about their characters like, at times, when they are new. Alongside, the case of the serial killer is also the disappearance of a neighbour’s daughter. But there was always the writing (well, that's not true, the writing only started two chapters above this one). I fell victim to that most dreadful of things: peer pressure. Two friends were writing novels and I thought, 'why not? I could do that'.Der Garten des Sargmachers’ ist der dritte Band der Ash Henderson Reihe des Autors Stuart McBride. Es ist jedoch in meinen Augen nicht unbedingt nötig, die beiden Vorgängerbände zu lesen um dem Fortgang der Handlung zu folgen.

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