P Is For...

Pat McIntosh - author of six books in a series featuring Gilbert Cunningham, a young notary in 15th century Glasgow. The first book in the series - THE HARPER'S QUINE - introduces us to Gil as he investigates the murder of a young woman in the new Glasgow Cathedral. Later books in the series are set in Glasgow University, Stirling, Linlithgow, an almshouse, and a coalmine amongst other locations. "With a historian's eye for detail and a novelist's flair for plot and characterization, McIntosh provides an intelligent, authentic, and suspenseful historical whodunit that will please the most demanding of Ellis Peters' fans." - Booklist

Paul Johnston - Paul Johnston is the author of three very different series - the Alex Mavros novels, set in Greece, featuring a half-Greek, half-Scottish private investigator; the Matt Wells novels which feature a crime novelist as protagonist; and the Quintilian Dalrymple series (my favourite of Johnston's series) which are set in a dystopian Edinburgh in the near future (2020s). The protagonist is an ex-policeman turned private investigator who's not best loved by the authorities. Funny, clever and great storytelling. And it's been far too long since the last one. "In a series of highly original books set a couple of decades in the future, Paul Johnston has created a portrait of the post-Enlightenment city-state of Edinburgh, whose inhabitants' drab lives are controlled by a secretive little group of dour Guardians. Despite the grimness of the setting, the books are always entertaining, in part because of the unsquashably rebellious personality of Johnston's maverick sleuth, Quint Dalrymple, and the sardonic humour which enlivens the narrative." - Sunday Telegraph

Peter May - as well as writing for TV, Peter May has written standalone thrillers, plus a series featuring a half-Scottish, half-Italian former forensic scientist called Enzo MacLeod who lives in France and solves cold cases. Peter May is probably best known, however, for his China set thrillers which pair detective Li Yan and pathologist Margaret Campbell. "An accomplished pulse-racer of a novel. This book is much more than just a run of the mill whodunit, think Silence of the Lambs crossed with Quincy, with a bit of the Lonely Planet's Guide to Beijing thrown in." -Daily Record (about chinese Whispers).

Peter Turnbull - Peter Turnbull is the author of over 35 novels. He is best known for the police procedurals set in Glasgow's P Division - a fictitious division similar to Ed McBain's 87th Precinct. Like McBain's books, the stories don't focus on one or two characters, but the entire division. Sadly, he stopped writing this series in the late 1990s. He also writes a police procedural series set in York featuring Chief Inspector Hennessey and Sergeant Yellich, as well as a number of standalone novels. "Our own mean streets done to a turn by Turnbull" - The Times. "Grips like the devil’s forceps" - The Observer.

Philip Kerr - Philip Kerr has written six books in the Bernie Gunther series - Bernie is a hard-boiled detective in Berlin in the 1930s who specialises in finding missing persons. Kerr has also written a number of other thrillers set in the past, present and future, as well as childrens' books under the name P B Kerr. His most recent Bernie Gunther novel - THE DEAD RISE NOT - recently won the RBA international prize for crime fiction - the world's most lucrative crime fiction prize (125,000 Euros - nice!) "Kerr builds his story like an apple strudel, lots of layers that peel away to reveal a shocker based on fact that threatens everybody from Peron down to Gunther...A Quiet Flame is an intelligent, smartly written thriller with a touch of reality that makes its chills even more chilly" - Pittsburgh Post Gazette