Nina Allan
A multi-award-winning novelist and critic, Nina was listed by The Guardian in 2018 as one of its Fresh Voices: 50 Writers You Should Read Now. A recipient of the British Science Fiction Award, the Kitschies Red Tentacle and France’s Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire. Her 2025 novel, A Granite Silence, is a historical true-crime mystery that visits Aberdeen and Stonehaven. Known for: A Granite Silence. The Good Neighbours. The Rift. The Dollmaker. The Silver Wind.
Julie Adams
Arbroath writer Julie Adams began her fiction career after many years in teaching and now writes crime and mystery novels set across the Scottish Highlands.
Her debut novel Malbister (2020), a road-trip mystery set on the North Coast 500, introduced readers to her storytelling style exploring family, community and hidden secrets. Her more recent novel Fenagill follows disgraced art historian Cally James as she uncovers a mystery involving missing people, stolen art and a cursed castle. Known for: Malbister. Fenagill. Highland-set crime and mystery fiction.
Tariq Ashkanani
Tariq won the McIlvanney Prize for Scottish Crime Book of the Year 2025 with his novel The Midnight King, awarded at the Bloody Scotland crimewriting festival. His debut novel Welcome to Cooper (2021) won the Bloody Scotland Debut Prize and was also nominated for the Capital Crime Fingerprint Award and the CWA New Blood Dagger. Tariq, an Edinburgh-based solicitor, also hosts the Page One Podcast. Known for: The Midnight King; 2025 McIlvanney Prize winner. Welcome to Cooper; Bloody Scotland Debut Prize winner. Follow Me to the Edge. The Cooper series.
Rachel Bremner
Rachel Bremner writes Scottish coastal crime fiction set in Stonehaven, exploring the secrets people keep, the histories they inherit and the tensions that surface when something goes wrong. Her debut novel The Crimson Keep draws on the dramatic landscapes and legends of the north-east coast. Rachel Bremner is the crime-writing pen name of bestselling women’s fiction and domestic suspense author Emma Dhesi. Known for: The Crimson Keep.
Mark Bridgeman
Mark’s books explore true crime, historical mysteries and unsolved cases from Scotland and beyond. Since publishing his first book in 2019 he has written more than a dozen bestselling titles, with his work appearing on ITV, Channel 5, Discovery+, the History Channel and the BBC. The Violet Charlesworth Story was shortlisted for The Guardian’s Top 20 non-fiction books of 2025. Known for: Perthshire’s Pound of Flesh. The Scottish Murder Book. The Dark Side of the Dales. Unsolved cases and True crime investigations.
Lexie Conyngham
Lexie Conyngham is a historian based in north-east Scotland whose historical crime novels draw on a life spent among Scotland’s old cities, ancient universities and hidden aristocratic estates. Her series include the Murray of Letho and Hippolyta Napier mysteries set in Georgian Scotland, the Robert Wilson series set in eighteenth-century Europe, the Alec Cattanach series set in wartime Aberdeen, and the Orkneyinga Murders set in Viking-age Orkney. Known for: Series – Orkneyinga Murders; Murray of Letho; Hippolyta Napier; Alec Cattanach.