Join us as we enjoy an hour in the company of two of crime fiction’s most popular and talented authors. Peter celebrates a special milestone this September when One of Us is Dead, the 20th book in his much-loved Roy Grace series is published. The series has sold 21 million copies, been translated into 38 languages, and adapted into a hit ITV drama. Elly, the creator of the wonderful Ruth Galloway novels, has won a vast following worldwide with her rich and skilful storytelling. Her latest bestseller is The Last Word, a beautifully crafted page turner set in rural Sussex. 

Chaired by Jenny Brown.
Crime in the Spotlight reading from Morag Pringle.

Join us as we enjoy an hour in the company of two of crime fiction’s most popular and talented authors. Peter celebrates a special milestone this September when One of Us is Dead, the 20th book in his much-loved Roy Grace series is published. The series has sold 21 million copies, been translated into 38 languages, and adapted into a hit ITV drama. Elly, the creator of the wonderful Ruth Galloway novels, has won a vast following worldwide with her rich and skilful storytelling. Her latest bestseller is The Last Word, a beautifully crafted page turner set in rural Sussex. 

Chaired by Jenny Brown.
Crime in the Spotlight reading from Morag Pringle.

Islands are different; and those who live there are shaped differently because of it. For crime writers, islands are usefully isolated, strange, and offer no way out. Meet three who have brilliantly exploited remote Scottish island settings for their own dark ends. George Paterson’s thrilling Westerwick is a masterful, yet macabre exploration of the twisted mind of island-born serial killer Angus John MacMillan. Secrets, lies and bodies all wash up on secluded shores in Liz Webb’s relentlessly tense new novel The Saved. Truth, Truth, Lie is a killer premise and the deadliest game as Claire McGowan takes old friends to a private island.

Author Marsali Taylor will chair this event. 

Join us as we officially launch the 2024 festival and witness the awarding of the McIlvanney Prize and Bloody Scotland Debut Prize. Master of ceremonies, TV and radio presenter Bryan Burnett, will lead us into the much-anticipated awards and interview the winners on stage. 

Bloody Scotland cocktails will be on hand for all as we officially launch the 2024 festival and witness the awarding of the McIlvanney Prize and Bloody Scotland Debut Prize. Mingle with this year’s authors and contenders before master of ceremonies, TV and radio presenter Bryan Burnett, will lead us into the much-anticipated awards and interview the winners on stage. 

Following the conclusion of the prize ceremony, the Stirling Schools Pipe Band will lead a piped procession of authors and readers up King Street and past the Corn Exchange to the Albert Halls in time for the first event of the evening. 

The Bloody Scotland Scottish Crime Debut of the Year may not be the snappiest prize title around but it’s undoubtedly among the most sought after. This year’s first novels have been whittled down to just five and the authors will discuss their books before making their way to the prize ceremony in the Albert Halls. 

The 2024 finalists hoping to follow in the footsteps of last year’s winner Kate Foster are: Suzy Aspley for Crow Moon; Daniel Aubrey for Dark Island; Allan Gaw for The Silent House of Sleep; Doug Sinclair for Blood Runs Deep; and Martin Stewart for Double Proof. 

This event will be chaired by BBC journalist Pauline McLean. 

Agatha Christie will forever be the grand dame of British crime fiction and her enduring influence on contemporary writers is unquestionable. Some follow her lead unwittingly, but others proudly pay homage with devilishly twisty Christie-like plots – and these are three of the best. Benjamin Stevenson tips his hat to the Orient Express in the gloriously inventive Everyone on This Train is a Suspect. Frances White’s Voyage of the Damned is a mind-blowing fantasy murder mystery with Agatha (and some Tolkein) in its DNA. Simon McCleave’s Last Night at Villa Lucia uncovers the shocking secrets of the guests in a luxury Tuscan villa after one of them is found murdered in the villa’s infinity pool. 

This event will be chaired by author Vaseem Khan. 

Agatha Christie will forever be the grand dame of British crime fiction and her enduring influence on contemporary writers is unquestionable. Some follow her lead unwittingly, but others proudly pay homage with devilishly twisty Christie-like plots – and these are three of the best. Benjamin Stevenson tips his hat to the Orient Express in the gloriously inventive Everyone on This Train is a Suspect. Frances White’s Voyage of the Damned is a mind-blowing fantasy murder mystery with Agatha (and some Tolkein) in its DNA. Simon McCleave’s Last Night at Villa Lucia uncovers the shocking secrets of the guests in a luxury Tuscan villa after one of them is found murdered in the villa’s infinity pool.

This event will be chaired by author Vaseem Khan. 

Mid-19^th century Edinburgh was a time of world-leading medical advances but also a place of dark deeds and capital crimes. Breathtaking breakthroughs in surgery and anatomy were cheek to jowl with bodysnatching and murder, thus providing rich pickings for writers of historical crime fiction.Ambrose Parry’s Voices of the Dead, the fourth rip-roaring adventure in the brilliant Raven and Fisher series, sees body parts unaccounted for in the bowels of Surgeons’ Hall. The Specimens by Mairi Kidd takes a deliciously dark dive into the world of the anatomists, and two men named Burke and Hare who provided them with bodies.

This event will be chaired by Teddy Jamieson.
Crime in the Spotlight reading from TY Garner.

1986: The body of an undercover British agent is found by the side of a lane in Northern Ireland, a rope tied around his wrists and tape over his eyes. 2016: A police detective probes reports that the killer was another undercover British agent, a man known as ‘Stakeknife’. The largest murder investigation in British history begins.

Henry Hemming is the author of Four Shots in the Night, an extraordinary work of investigative journalism that reads like a thriller as it exposes the parallel worlds of the IRA and British Intelligence and tells the story of one detective’s pursuit of justice.

This event will be chaired by Frankie Burr.