Chasing Dark Shadows: Luca Veste, Emma Styles, Michael Wood, Linda Duncan McLaughlin @BloodyScotland #EmmaStyles #MichaelWood #LindaDuncanMcLaughlin #LucaVeste #ChasingDarkShadows #psychological thrillers

Chasing Dark Shadows
Featuring Luca Veste, Emma Styles,
Michael Wood, Linda Duncan McLaughlin

review written by Louise Cannon – Bookmarks and Stages

Chasing Dark Shadows was an insightful and entertaining panel about characters, their psychological make-up, the debates and more…

This, for me, was the most touching and most positively affecting part of the talk and it came from Michael Wood. He knows what he’s talking about. He came from a large family from what could be considered an impoverished background and was the case in the 90’s came across brick walls from teachers and a careers advisor when he said he wanted to be a writer. I find it relatable.

He says: “It Doesn’t Matter Where You Come From Or Where You Grew Up, It’s Got Nothing To Do With Being Able To Do Something”. Never a truer word, as I, myself am discovering as the years roll-on…

What was insightful, and if you’ve ever studied education, touching on psychology, which I have, some of this will be familiar, there was the look into nature vs nurture discussion. The direction it took was compelling and intellectual, looking at how we might all be capable and what the motivation might be. There was also look at the environment and the people around us, including parents imposing their views onto their children, even as much as if you scream at a spider, then you see them as a danger and become scared of them, it all has an impact and is looked at in various levels of psychology.

It was interesting to hear about characters in the books:

Linda Duncan McLaughlin’s Scottish Crime Debut of the Year – Shortlist 2026 is Original Sins. Joanne is a troubled woman who goes looking for her birth parents, partly inspired by her friend adopting a little girl from Cambodia.
Linda was particularly entertaining in how she carried her talk, getting the audience laughing with between fun and dark humour, although you wondered where it was going at times as she interjected to bring some lightness.

Emma Styles’ is an award-winning crime writer with her latest book, The Shark.
She poses an intriguingly thought-provoking question to ponder over: What would it be like if there was a serial killer in your neighbourhood and the police investigation wasn’t getting you anywhere? She then reminisced about cases when she was in Perth, Australia in the 80’s/90’s that happened and weren’t being resolved fast. Her book takes readers to a couple who abduct and kidnap the prime suspect because they want answers about nefarious activities that went on before.

She was candid in how she revealed how her characters often divide opinion. She mentioned how her young characters are and yet they are enraged and how people perhaps don’t like that as much as if it is an older character, who then people just find humour within that rage.

Michael Wood brings some characters back from before in his latest book, Evil In The Family (I reviewed this earlier in the year and recommend it for a compelling, edge of your seat read). Dr. Olivia Winter is a forensic psychologist who the media call the “serial killer hunter”. She travels the world incarcerating serial killers because she wants to understand what motivates them. The psychology within this is interesting and thought-provoking. There’s a deep motivation as to why she specialises in this to do with her own dark past, involving her father. Scarily, a killer is getting into everyone’s houses and murders. He did reassure everyone that the dog doesn’t die.

This is the 3rd book in this psychological thriller series. He’s written many other books prior to this series you can also investigate.

Luca Veste has brought back characters from a different series. Funnily, he mentions Buffy the Vampire tv series as an analogy of what he was going to do with his new book series. What he was getting at was how there was a self-contained plot.

Liar, Liar is rather topical as still, “cancel culture” is hot on many people’s lips, no matter what side of the fence you sit on, as well as police not always being “holier than thou”. Luca Veste quipped about being fascinated about people who are at the top of their game and then fall from grace, which is explored with his main character, Mark Fletcher.

Liar-Liar takes readers into Mark Fletcher’s life. He was once a hailed detective, but now he’s been suspended from the police. He wakes up one morning in a hotel room and has no idea how he got there…

They talked about having to “close the door” on the subject at the end of their time of writing for the day to take care of themselves. There seems to be a consensus that self-care is important and how sometimes bringing certain situations in a fictional way to the fore can be empowering.

#Review of Rogue Agents – C.J. Merritt, David Goodman, Paul Warner – Bloody Scotland Panel that’s now online until 30th Sept featuring books for those who like Slow Horses, Netflix Adaptations and delving deeper into the psyche #BloodyScotland #Thrillers

Rogue Agents – A Bloody Scotland Panel

Spies, espionage in both the real and the fictional world were discussed on this panel. It was intelligent, informative and entertaining. It was a highly pertinent panel as what we see in the news, live through and fictional worlds collide, each featuring MI5/MI6. The authors impart not just a bit about themselves and their books, but also some highly important information about things we are all technologically facing today…. One of the books will also feature on Netflix. Read further to find out more about this. I have a link at the end for how you can watch the talk online. Thanks to all the authors for the photo op.

Chris Merritt is a highly rated author, who has worked as a Diplomat in posts in Iraq and Jerusalem. He is a clinical psychologist with interest in PTSD. His first book was published in 2018 where they sat in the psychological thrillers, but Committed sat in both this and spy genres. His latest book is Octagon that is a full-on action/adventure spy thriller where a woman has set up her own private intelligence agency off the back of leaving the SIS. Her old boss gives her a cryptic message and then dies in suspicious circumstances. She is then accompanied by her ex-lover, a former SAS operator. The message takes them across Europe to get answers.

He wanted high stakes so people care about the characters among the unfolding of multiple threats, including technological threats. I previously reviewed this book and he achieves this and more in what is a compelling book.
There will be sequel, which will also be worth looking out for.

He compellingly imparted how the main characters have each experienced traumas from their previous work and it affects how they also react in the situation they are presented in. The process on using his experience as a clinical psychologist was very engaging. He thinks in terms of a stimulus in-front of you, what’s the instinctive reaction to it, what you think is going on and model the difficulties someone is experiencing, but in fiction it’s not about helping people, it’s about getting an interesting reaction from them and to keep it psychologically authentic.

David Goodman had been writing Sci-Fi, including one that sat in both this genre and the spy genre. He then got asked to write a straight spy novel.

Solitary Agents is sequel to Reluctant Spy. Jamie Tulloch agrees to loan himself to SAS programme and asked to live a limited life for a future spy to use as an identity. He ends up on a mission. In book 2 he moves away from it and is on Tinder and goes back to SIS as a trainee.

One-liner style humour was mentioned and how in real life, there is some dark humour that occurs in these types of jobs.

Paul Warner, a teacher who has done an MA in creative writing and a little journalism. The Spy in the Blood is about a spy of the 90’s, head of recruitment but looking forward to retirement. His daughter wants to join and discovers she is more suited than he thought as she went out on missions. She then didn’t come back and has try and work out the digital world to clear her name and then the action and body count mounts.

Watch out Netflix viewers, A Spy In The Blood will be adapted. It already has David Harper for the main character and Milie Bobby Brown playing his daughter. A24 producing it. It will be set in America with the main character changing to an FBI Agent.

The author did say for them to go for it. He seemed excited this was happening with his book.

Why people are so interested in spy fiction

This was an interesting question that prompted a very thought-provoking discussion between the authors.

The idea you can walk away from your life, the sneaking around or walking around people leading a secret life attracts readers to that escapism.

Geo-politics and threats are more present in people’s lives and people are more interested in it that even 10/20 years ago. The security, democracy, tech threats have come more to everyday experiences and want to know what’s going on. Stories and relatable characters help with this.
They talked about lots going on in the background and disruption in information war that is a kind of war. Hostile nations using technology to target the West, with AI being part of this and the “sleepwalking” of people putting literally everything on social media over the last decade or so and how the tech companies don’t care about us, just the data to sell on.

In the fictional books, they try to ground the spying, so sometimes it’s rather humanistic and not all about the technology.

People want spy fiction to make sense of it as we read it all and hopefully good guys will win out. So why not check out the aforementioned books and join the trend of reading about intriguing espionage.

Check out Bloody Scotland Online

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#Review of Nice and Cosy: Janice Hallett, Steve Higgs, Olly Smith @BloodyScotland #JaniceHallett #SteveHiggs #OllySmith

Nice and Cosy: Janice Hallett, Steve Higgs, Olly Smith

What links these 3 authors, apart from cosy crime? Agatha Christie, between Olly mentioning Joan Hickson as Miss Marple and Janice Hallett having her characters put on a play, The Hollow. It was a very entertaining panel and one that leaves you feeling hungry after all the talk of pork pies and wine and also wanting to devour their intriguing books.

It’s a panel, entertainingly chaired by Nicola Meighan that reveals a few surprises!

Olly Smith’s book is Death By Noir. Interestingly, he has links to Falkirk and Stirling.
You may know him from recommending wine on Saturday Kitchen or from some columns he’s written. His book isn’t quite as out the blue as it seems. He originally studied English and was always writing plots and doing plays, before wine hijacked this and took his career plans in a whole different, yet also successful direction. For him, then and now, it’s always been about the words on a page, communication and meeting people.

He talked about how in some ways deciphering wine is like solving mysteries. It’s and interesting take, but an understandable one as we see him with wine, telling us the flavour notes he’s worked out within it. In crime, there are different types of threads to follow, but both are working out the mystery.

Death by Noir, set in the South Downs, sounds welcoming with his lead welcoming everyone into his wine shop by Barclay, with his regional accent. All that seems idyllic turns into a murderous bonfire night.

Interestingly, has clearly thought about the landscape and how it relates to real life with his love of regenerative farming and environmental and taste factors.

Food is relatable and Steve Higgs book is Pork Pie Pandemonium. He, by his own admission, has an active imagination, but to his advantage he won a school competition, wrote for a magazine in the army and short stories. He got a pen out and wrote until he had something to publish and there a new book appeared for readers.

There’s a dog which seems to be a big character in helping a retired detective to solve crime. He, incidentally can’t cook, but not even the dog can help with that.
Interestingly, he talked about the geography can become a character as you enshroud people in architecture.

The Silent Appeal by Janice Hallett is 7-8 years later, since The Appeal and has community at the heart of it. She has been clever in choosing a theatrical setting to have a murder, with all the props, it’s great territory to have a murder. She is also interested in language and picks up accents and phrases.

She started her career by writing about bubble bath in small magazines and wrote 2 plays as well as studying screen-writing before she switched to novel writing.

All 3 books are available to buy now!

#Review of Across The Pond – Gavin Bell, Edel Coffey, Tariq Ashkanani – A #BloodyScotland Panel

Across The Pond

A Bloody Scotland Panel where the books reached the short-list of the McIllvanney Prize. Check out the titles and review below…

Anyone who grew up in the 1980’s and 1990’s would relate to this and the rest, it would add to their education of how things were. Films like Ghostbusters, Cagney and Lacey, ET, The Lost Boys, Back to the Future. There was a lot of American shows that were filmed in New York and “crossed the pond”. Nowadays films and series are now filmed in Glasgow because it has a similar grid system and costs less to film in.
There was talk of New York being generic yet unique and keeping writing at surface level. There was also humour at the fact fiction states the title, then “A Novel” on book “across the pond”.

It is interestingly about how Tariq Ashkanani talks about the America then that has a lot of scope for stories and now it’s an even more complex place.
His book looks at missing 2 boys and has many questions about what happened earlier, the parents coping in different ways.
He also looks at almost derelict towns and those that stay in a place that is practically condemned and where people may fall behind the rest of the world and those who move away. It’s setting causes some mystery within itself.

Gavin Bell has been published under many pseudonyms. I read his books under the name, Mason Cross many years ago, now he’s published 138 Main Street using his real name. 4 murders, 4 streets. There are many of these addresses to untangle for where the killer can go next. It might even be in a different town in different housing types. It takes readers across many parts of America.

The Killing Season was his debut novel and involved State-hopping and was always going to be set in America as not got the same gun laws as in the UK.

Edel Coffey Breaking Point was set in New York as knows about it and needed a place that could lend itself to being harder than Ireland, that has a more generous maternity benefit.

Her new book, Glass Houses is inspired by the elite and she talked really fascinatingly about how people can view each other from different classes and the friction, how, in Ireland this gap has widened. She has made the rule in her book that you can’t have curtains and plays with reflection and glass, how it can obscure things. She was inspired by Hitchcock’s Rear Window.

Books are out now.

#Review of Bloody Scotland Panel – Mark Billingham with Richard Osman @BloodyScotland @VikingBooks @richardosman #RichardOsman #MarkBillingham #BloodyScotland

Richard Osman and Mark Billingham is a must on anyone’s review list, I think and so are their books. They both give a highly entertaining, fascinating, warm and friendly talk. Mark Billingham asked excellent questions, which Richard Osman had interesting answers to. The banter between them was fun. I could easily listen to them for longer than the allocated hour. The first time I saw these authors was just before the Thursday Murder Club was published. It was a real treat to see them return to Bloody Scotland.

We Chase Shadows, the second in The We Solve Murders series is a compelling, fascinating 5 star read.

Richard Osman is smart and has thought about longevity in his writing career. Being influenced by his first ever crime fiction read – The Famous Five by Enid Blyton and later, Agatha Christie, he set out to plan The Thursday Murder Club series. He also always wanted a detective agency, so started his new series, We Solve Murders and has just published the second, We Chase Shadows. He plans to write both series alternate years. The calibre of his writing, has landed him spectacularly the top spot in authorship. He is the bestselling author of the decade! It’s a great, well-deserved achievement.

He talked about We Chase Shadows and how it’s always about the character. You have Steve who likes his cat, the pub and living the quiet life in the Newforest. He also doesn’t know how to dress for the heat, so Osman takes him to hot destinations with funny results. There’s Amy, who’s a bodyguard and more the globetrotter. Interestingly, he talked about being inspired by a Jackie Collins documentary with the lifestyle and destinations. It is, however about humans and he certainly keeps it grounded.

The series does, as you’d expect, have a different voice to The Thursday Murder Club and differences in the way they interact. Both series are excellent reads.

Richard Osman is astute, observant. He talked about how there are influences around families and culture and X and Y are against each other and how that is divisive. He doesn’t see it like that. He talked about the world we actually live in, where there are communities coming together and where friends can disagree and yet love each other anyway. I felt this was particularly important for people to hear from him and it carried so much warmth.

Rather thought-provokingly, he also talked about the male relationships in his book and how they care about each other, but it’s never said, it’s always something else, such as directions and this is something you see between Steve and Tony. It’s also about what you reveal and what you keep back and that’s interesting when it comes to writing too, so can’t wait to see what he has next in store for readers.

On his characters, he talked about getting to know them organically, like friends, some you know instantly and others, it’s in stages and some characters even come as a surprise to him.

He likes to add interesting characters and twists and turns and lots happening into his short, perfectly formed chapters.

With great insight, he mentioned social media and talked about how many followers you have does not matter. If folk don’t want to buy your book, they won’t and if they do, they do. It’s about the quality of the writing. There are some authors who have loads of followers, but not many book sales and some not even on social media and have lots of book sales.

He has other sound advice not to write for the market, but to write what you want to write about, what interests you and the market may catch up.

He mentioned his TV work and the 100 episodes a year of House of Games and how he didn’t want the team to break and that they are happy his replacement is Michael Sheen.
He also talked about doing less tv and writing more.

He’s doing things differently from The Thursday Murder Club film for We Solve Murders. It’s going to be a series on Netflix, but this time he will be a bit more involved.

We Chase Shadows is available in bookshops and libraries now.

Excitingly, the next The Thursday Murder Club will be published around Sept 2027.

BLOODY SCOTLAND REVEALS THAT FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER THE SAME AUTHOR HAS WON THE BLOODY SCOTLAND DEBUT PRIZE AND THE McILVANNEY PRIZE

BLOODY SCOTLAND REVEALS THAT FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER THE SAME AUTHOR HAS WON THE BLOODY SCOTLAND DEBUT PRIZE AND THE McILVANNEY PRIZE

sponsored by the Glencairn Glass

It has been a year of firsts. The first year Bloody Scotland had an all-woman shortlist for the Bloody Scotland Debut Prize. The first year four of those women made it onto the longlist for the McIlvanney Prize and now – for the first time ever – the same author has won both The Bloody Scotland Debut Prize and the McIlvanney Prize. Congratulations to Frances Crawford whose novel A Bad, Bad Place (Transworld) has swept the boards at Bloody Scotland International Crime Writing Festival this year, only two months after picking up the McDermid debut prize at Harrogate.Guest programmer, Denise Mina, has long been vocal about the lack of women in the prize landscape and is thrilled by the result. She said:‘Frances Crawford’s ‘A Bad Bad Place’ is a novel of profound depth and scope. Insightful, harrowing and very funny, it deals with the reality of violent crime and its impact on many victims. This is a spectacular debut from a wonderful new voice. She is the very first double winner and it could not be more deserved.’Bloody Scotland co-founder, author and chair of the Debut Prize judges, Alex Gray, said:‘A Bad, Bad Place captured my heart from the first mention of Janey’s dog, Sid Vicious. From then on the Glasgow patter and the different characters wound around me like a familiar … though not so comfy… blanket. Beautifully written, thoughtfully perceived from a child’s perspective, this is one novel that will remain with me for a long time to come.’McIlvanney Prize judge, author and broadcaster, Sally Magnusson, said:

‘This is a novel full of Glasgow wit and deep humanity. Unpacking a harrowing crime through the impressions of a grandmother and a child is gloriously original. The world we encounter through their eyes is scary, unfair, misogynistic, tragic – and wonderfully funny. The cost of murder is movingly evoked in a way that stays with you long after the book is closed.’Kirsty Nicholson, Marketing Director at Glencairn – sponsors of The Bloody Scotland Debut and McIlvanney Prizes with The Glencairn Glass, the official glass for whisky, said:‘This has been a truly remarkable year of firsts for Bloody Scotland and we are delighted to celebrate Frances Crawford’s extraordinary achievement. Winning both the Debut and McIlvanney Prizes is an incredible accomplishment and a testament to her exceptional storytelling talent. It is particularly wonderful to see Frances’ journey come full circle, having won our Glencairn Glass Crime Short Story Competition in 2023. A huge congratulations on this well-deserved success – we cannot wait to see what comes next!’The presentation of both prizes took place in the Church of the Holy Rude on Friday 18 September before a grand procession led by guest programmer Denise Mina to her event with Lee Child at The Albert Halls.Frances Crawford started writing late in life. She secured a scholarship to study Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow and credits her tutor, Canongate author Louise Welsh, with encouraging her to take her short story and develop it into a novel. She graduated aged 60 with MLitt (Distinction). The short story won the Glencairn Glass Crime Short Story competition in 2023. Following a ten-way auction Transworld editor, Finn Cotton, acquired rights from agents Oli Munson and Euan Thorneycroft at A M Heath. At Bloody Scotland 2025 an informal proof signing drew larger crowds than some of the event signings. A Bad, Bad Place was published to great acclaim in February 2026 and will be published in paperback on 31 December. Bloody Scotland is delighted to celebrate an extraordinary new talent representing Scottish crime writing on the world stage.