Stuart MacBride's books: a reading guide
Get ready for This House of Burning Bones, the brand new Logan McRae novel, with our guide to crime writer Stuart MacBride's books.
Stuart MacBride is the bestselling author of Scotland-based crime fiction including the Logan McRae novels and the Oldcastle series featuring Ash Henderson. He has sold over 6.5 million books worldwide and been translated into twenty-two languages. Here, Stuart introduces his work, and offers new readers an insight into which series might be their cup of tea. Or 'horrid pie', as he puts it.
I have always been an eclectic reader. Ever since I was a little boy, I’ve been the kind of cliché kid that would read books by torchlight when the rest of the house was asleep. Crime fiction, science fiction, fantasy, humour, horror, classics, adventure, Aga sagas. . . Raiding the school library during the week and my parents’ collection of novels on the weekends.
I read and I read and I read and I read.
Which is probably why the books I write have a little bit of everything in them. OK, maybe not dragons, or aliens, or men called Mr Wizzyplop – though I do like to take horrible liberties with a trope or an archetype – but there’s a little hint of everything I’ve ever read in everything I’ll ever write.
And all that gets wrapped like flaky pastry around the revolting pie filling that is modern life, then drenched in human gravy. . .
Yup: I like to take horrible liberties with metaphors, too.
My horrid pies are mostly set in the northeast of Scotland – because that’s where I’m from and it makes research a hell of a lot easier than setting them on an Antarctic base or the International Space Station – where we have a very. . . unique way of looking at the world and its problems.
Which is important, because the best fiction in any genre, deals with the things society cares and worries about. That’s its job – to show us who we really are in a way that makes sense of it all, while hopefully being entertaining and not too preachy along the way. And if you can do all that with a good dollop of humour then you’ve got a book I’d like to read.
Certainly, it’s the kind of book I like to write.
Speaking of which:
The world of Logan McRae
Set in Aberdeenshire and Morayshire, DI Logan McRae is a normal man doing a difficult job in horrible circumstances, assisted – and frequently hindered – by what might best be described as a cavalcade of weirdos, misfits, and idiots. Expect serial killers, quirky gangland figures, unsettling post mortems, and a sidekick who mangles the English language with gleeful abandon.
What is the new Logan McCrae book?
This House of Burning Bones
by Stuart MacBride
It’s not going well for Aberdeen's NE Division: half the force is off sick, all leave has been cancelled, someone has firebombed a hotel full of migrants and there’s a massive protest march happening this Saturday. With officers dropping like flies, Detective Inspector Logan McRae has to kick off a major murder investigation with a skeleton staff of misfits, idiots and malingerers until the top brass can arrange back-up from other divisions. But, as bad as everything seems, things are about to get much, much worse.
And where did it all begin?
Cold Granite
by Stuart MacBride
The first book in the Logan McCrae series, Cold Granite, sees the DS returning to work after a year off sick into the worst possible case: a serial killer stalking through the dark Aberdeen winter.
The series continues with Dying Light, Broken Skin, Flesh House, Blind Eye, Dark Blood, Shatter the Bones, Close to the Bone, The Missing and the Dead, In the Cold Dark Ground, The Blood Road and All That's Dead.
The Oldcastle novels
Half of these feature Logan’s antithesis: Ash Henderson, a traditionally dour ex-detective inspector with a troubled past and an even more troubled future. Accompanied by Dr Alice MacDonald – a forensic psychologist who babbles when she’s nervous – Ash solves some of the darkest of crimes there are. The other Oldcastle books are standalones, set in the same universe, with several cross-over characters, and tend to be quite. . .strange.
Birthdays for the Dead
by Stuart MacBride
The first in the Ash Henderson series introduces the DC through a dark secret: his daughter didn't run away, she's one of the victims of the killer he is currently investigating, and he refuses to be taken off the case. The series continues with A Song for the Dying and The Coffinmaker’s Garden.
