James Oswald

Coming home to her London flat, Constance stumbles across a young man, bloodied, mutilated, and barely alive. She calls it in and is quickly thrown into the middle of a nationwide investigation. It seems that the victim is just the latest in a string of similar ritualistic attacks. No matter that she is off-duty, no matter that there are those in the MET who would gladly see the back of her, Con can't shake her innate determination to bring the monsters...

Her mummified body is hidden in the dark corner of a basement room, a room which seems to have been left untouched for decades. A room which feels as cold as the grave. As a rowdy demonstration makes its slow and vocal way along Edinburgh's Royal Mile, Detective Chief Inspector Tony McLean's team are on stand-by for any trouble. The newly promoted McLean is distracted, inexplicably drawn to a dead-end mews street - and a door, slightly ajar, which...

On compassionate leave following the death of her mother, Detective Constable Constance Fairchild thought renting a cottage near Aberystwyth, Wales would get her far enough from London to finally relax. But trouble always seems to find Con, and it's not long before she is cooling off in a police station cell after defending herself from two would-be rapists. In custody she meets a young Ukrainian woman, Lila, who confides in Con that she's been forced...

When an Edinburgh Police Vice Squad raid goes embarrassingly awry, Inspector Tony McLean is confronted by something he had thought long buried. Haunted by the echoes of an old case, the memories won't fade as McLean struggles to piece together the elusive connections between a series of strange and gruesome deaths shocking the city. The investigation draws him ever deeper into the upper echelons of Edinburgh society. Powerful people who do not take...

The charred remains of an elderly woman are discovered in a burned-out game-keeper's cottage, hidden away in woodland to the west of Edinburgh. Clearly no accidental fire, Detective Inspector Tony McLean suspects that neither is this simply a grim arson attack. There is far more to the victim than her humble surroundings might suggest, and something ritualistic to her horrific murder. Nor will it be the only case of death by fire that Tony and his...

A truck driver loses control in central Edinburgh, ploughing into a crowded bus stop and spilling his vehicle's toxic load. The consequences are devastating. DI Tony McLean witnesses the carnage. Taking control of the investigation, he soon realises there is much that is deeply amiss - and everyone involved seems to have something to hide. But as McLean struggles to uncover who caused the tragedy, a greater crisis develops: the new Chief Superintendent's...

The body of a man is founding hanging in an empty house. To the Edinburgh police force this appears to be a simple suicide case. Days later another body is found. The body is hanging from an identical rope and the noose has been tied using the same knot. Then a third body is found. As McLean digs deeper he descends into a world where the lines of reality are blurred and that the most irrational answers become the only explanations.

Every year for ten years, a young woman's body was found in Edinburgh at Christmas time: naked, throat slit, body washed clean. The final victim was was Detective Constable Tony McLean's fiancee, but the killer made a mistake and McLean put an end to the killing spree. 12 years later, the Christmas killer is murdered. But with the festive season comes a body; naked, washed, and with her throat cut.