Tag: #teamorenda

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: The Nancys and the Secret of Tulip Farm – R.W.R McDonald

ramblingmads

The Nancys are back…

It’s four months after Christmas, and Tippy Chan, Uncle Pike and Devon are reunited in Riverstone for the first anniversary of Tippy’s father’s death. This time, the plan is simple: no mysteries, no crimes, and definitely no secret detective clubs. Riverstone has other ideas…

When an early-morning explosion destroys the town hall and kills three people, the town is thrown into chaos. An arrest is made and Riverstone decides the case is closed … except for Tippy, Pike and Devon. Once again, it’s up to the Nancys to go against the flow … and police advice.

Their search draws them towards Tulip Farm and raises more questions than answers. Is the accused bomber really guilty? Was he working alone? And when everyone else is convinced they’re right, does that make you wrong?

With rumours spreading, tempers flaring and the threat of another attack hanging over the town, the Nancys must work out who to trust, who to ignore, and how to stop a killer before they strike again…

R.W.R. McDonald (Rob) is an award-winning author, a Kiwi and Queer dad living in Melbourne with his two daughters and one HarryCat.

His debut novel, The Nancys (published in the UK as The Nancys and the Case of the Missing Necklace), won Best First Novel in the 2020 Ngaio Marsh Awards, as well as being a finalist in the Best Novel category. It was shortlisted for Best First Novel in the 2020 Ned Kelly Awards, and Highly Commended for an Unpublished Manuscript in the 2017 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards.

His second novel, Nancy Business (published in the UK as The Nancys and the Secret of Tulip Farm), was a finalist for Best Novel in the 2022 Ngaio Marsh Awards. Rob is working on the third book in The Nancys series.

My thoughts: I loved this, I love Tippy and her Uncle Pike and Devon. I really felt for her in this book, she goes on several emotional rollercoasters. When a bomb goes off in the middle of Riverstone, she worries that her mum, Helen, might be hurt as the medical centre where she works is right there. Thankfully, she’s ok (I don’t think that’s a spoiler) but the identity of the bomber makes no sense, Mr Tulips, the local flower grower and florist, just doesn’t seem like someone who would blow up his van, the town hall, and injure several people.

So the Nancys reconvene to investigate. With Devon on multicoloured pen duty, some blank new walls to act as their case board and Tippy’s analytical mind, they’re soon tracking down witnesses, interviewing the supposed bomber’s neighbours, and uncovering secrets.

As long as Uncle Pike and Devon can sort out their relationship issues and stay together, Tippy doesn’t need more adults leaving, and they all stay safe, it’ll be fine. But as Tippy discovers, adults really are very complicated.

Another excellent adventure, with some great crime solving and more eccentric characters. Loved it. Can’t wait for book three!

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: The Deadly Inheritance of Everest MacDonald – A.J. West

ramblingmads

As the Great War rages on the continent, Everest Macdonald is summoned to her father’s deathbed and entrusted with a final urgent request: she must uncover the truth behind the murder of her uncle, the celebrated Victorian actor William Terriss, a crime that has haunted her family for twenty years.

In 1897, Terriss was stabbed to death outside London’s Adelphi Theatre, a killing that shocked Victorian society. The murderer was swiftly arrested and confined to Broadmoor, the case declared closed.

Yet years later, a sealed package of evidence passed to Everest by her dying father casts doubt on the official verdict and the haste with which it was reached.

Drawn back to wartime London, with her husband and children left behind, Everest begins her investigation, following a trail that leads her into the world of late-Victorian theatre, where fame and fortune mask obsession, envy and cruelty.

With time running out and her father’s strength failing, Everest must uncover what really happened on the night Terriss died, and shed light on the unsettling legacy he left behind…

A.J. West’s bestselling debut novel The Spirit Engineer won the Historical Writers’ Association Debut Crown Award, gaining international praise for its telling of a longforgotten true story.

His second novel, The Betrayal of Thomas True, debuted at number two on the Sunday Times bestseller list, and won the CWA Historical Dagger. A.J. was also shortlisted for the Booksellers Association Author the Year.

An award-winning BBC newsreader and reporter, he has written for national newspapers and regularly appears on network television discussing his writing and the historical context of contemporary events.

A passionate historical researcher, he writes at The London Library and museum archives around the world.

My thoughts: Based on a true murder case and real people, this was a very interesting and intriguing read. Everest MacDonald is summoned by her dying father to fulfil his final request – solve her uncle’s murder, his supposed killer might be in Broadmoor, but the facts and the story don’t add up.

As Everest starts to investigate, she also reads her father’s memoir of the early years of his time in India, and then her late aunt’s diary, both documents filling in the details of her uncle’s life and possibly his death. If an escaped lunatic actor doesn’t kill her whole family first.

Aided by her adopted niece, she works to put the pieces together, questioning various witnesses and involved parties, including her cousins, the theatre doorkeeper and several luminaries of Victorian theatre land.

Clever, and full of twists and turns, this was really enjoyable and entertaining, her aunt endured a terrible time with her uncle, always travelling and running from a curse, while Everest is much more practical minded than most of the other characters, not believing in ghosts and curses, but sure someone is messing about and interfering in her investigation.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: The Cutting – Michael J Malone

ramblingmads

The most dangerous voices are the ones no one else can hear…

Evie Cartwright first speaks to the dead as a child. When she leaves home for university, her gift takes a terrifying turn after she witnesses a brutal murder. By morning, she is haunted by a dead serial killer who refuses to leave her alone, and marked by a cut across her neck that never heals.

For the next ten years, Evie is driven from place to place, searching for a way to rid herself of the voice that torments her day and night.

When desperation leaves her with nowhere else to turn, she arrives at the remote Highland home of Annie Jackson, hoping she will finally find answers.

As Annie and her brother Lewis begin to investigate, helped by an old friend with specialist knowledge of the occult, they are drawn into a dark and dangerous search that reaches deep into Scotland’s history.

Michael Malone is a prize-winning poet and author who was born and brought up in the heart of Burns’ country. He has published over 200 poems in literary magazines throughout the UK, including New Writing Scotland, Poetry Scotland and Markings.

Blood Tears, his bestselling debut novel won the Pitlochry Prize from the Scottish Association of Writers. His dark psychological thriller, A Suitable Lie, was a number one bestseller, and is currently in production for the screen, and five powerful standalone thrillers followed suit.

The Murmurs, The Torments and The Howling, the first three books in the Annie Jackson Mysteries series, were published to critical acclaim.

A former Regional Sales Manager (Faber) he has also worked as an IFA and a bookseller. Michael lives in Ayr, where he also works as a hypnotherapist.

My thoughts: Annie has found a sort of peace, when Evie, who speaks to the dead, comes crashing into her life. She’s haunted by the angry ghost of Vincent – whose mother and sister were killed centuries ago during the witch trials in Scotland.

Vincent won’t let Evie go, and she’s getting desperate, she’s hoping Annie can help her and together they visit Annie’s friend Ina to try to unravel Vincent’s past and find a way to remove him from Evie.

Lewis is determined to find Pierce and stop him, knowing that he won’t leave the siblings alone, and even more so after he starts going after people in their lives – Annie’s boss, Lewis’ friend Ewan. But even with help from Sylvia Lowry-Law and her organisation, it won’t be easy to find and stop him.

I really like this series, I love Annie, she’s a fantastic character, and I feel for her, she’s been through a lot. Tying her in with the tragic and ugly history of the women murdered as witches in Scotland makes sense, it’s clear her strange gifts must come from somewhere, and she would have probably lost her life in another time.

The book ends on something of a cliffhanger so I can’t wait to see whether the next installment of this story brings some answers for Annie, Lewis and their fans.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: The Winter Job – Antti Tuomainen, translated by David Hackston

ramblingmads

To celebrate the paperback release of this funny book, i’m re-posting my review from the hardback blog tour. Grab yourself a copy!

Helsinki, 1982. Recently divorced postal worker Ilmari Nieminen has promised his daughter a piano for Christmas, but with six days to go – and no money – he’s desperate. A last-minute job offers a solution: transport a valuable antique sofa to Kilpisjärvi, the northernmost town in Finland.

With the sofa secured in the back of his van, Ilmari stops at a gas station, and an old friend turns up, offering to fix his faulty wipers, on the condition that he tags along. Soon after, a persistent Saab 96 appears in the rearview mirror. And then a bright-yellow Lada.

That’s when Ilmari realises that he is transporting something truly special. And that’s when Ilmari realises he might be in serious trouble…

Finnish Antti Tuomainen was an award-winning copywriter when he made his literary debut in 2007 as a suspense author. In 2011, Tuomainen’s third novel, The Healer, was awarded the Clue Award for Best Finnish Crime Novel and was shortlisted for the Glass Key Award.

In 2013, the Finnish press crowned Tuomainen the ‘King of Helsinki Noir’ when Dark as My Heart was published. Tuomainen was one of the first to challenge the Scandinavian crime-genre formula, and his poignant, dark and hilarious The Man Who Died became an international bestseller, shortlisting for the Petrona and Last Laugh Awards. Palm Beach, Finland (2018) was an immense success, with The Times calling Tuomainen ‘the funniest writer in Europe’, and Little Siberia (2019) was shortlisted for the Capital Crime/Amazon Publishing Readers Awards, the Last Laugh Award and the CWA International Dagger, and won the Petrona Award for Best Scandinavian Crime Novel. It was released as a Netflix film in 2025.

The Rabbit Factor, the first book in a trilogy that includes The Moose Paradox and The Beaver Theory, is now in production for TV with Amazon Studios, starring Steve Carell. The Moose Paradox was a Literary Review and Guardian Book of the Year and shortlisted for CrimeFest’s Last Laugh Award. The trilogy was followed in 2024 by The Burning Stones.

Antti lives in Helsinki with his wife.

My thoughts:Taking a last minute delivery job that turns out to be a complete nightmare, Ilmari the postman is determined to buy a piano for his daughter for Christmas.

The dodgy van he’s given guzzles fuel and isn’t exactly designed for driving through the snow. He picks up an old friend, and some unwanted followers  – a Lada and a Saab, both want the sofa in the back of the van and are prepared to do almost anything to get it.

This blackly comic tale of a desperate drive across Finland to deliver a sofa and the unpleasant surprise they find inside it, made me laugh, it’s quite silly and weird, which is very Tuomainen, whose books I really enjoy. The stakes are pretty high and the ending is rewarding, definitely worth a re-read, maybe at Christmas!

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: The Last Tenant – Eva Björg, Ægisdottir, translated by Victoria Cribb

ramblingmads

When the skeletons of a young woman and a baby are uncovered on a long-abandoned farm in Hvalfjörður, it is clear they were buried years apart. West Iceland CID begins to investigate the disturbing discovery, aware that someone has gone to great lengths to keep the past hidden.

In Akranes, Karitas, a young single mother seeking a new start, settles in with her four-year-old son and rents a basement flat from an eccentric landlord. A cautious sense of happiness returns when she meets the boy next door.

But when news breaks that a local girl has been murdered, Karitas must decide who she can trust, knowing that one wrong choice could place her and her child in danger. Detective Elma is drawn into the case, forced to navigate long-hidden family secrets to understand a killer’s motive, while struggling to hold together her increasingly troubled relationship with Sævar.

Born in Akranes, Eva Björg Ægisdóttir studied for an MSc in Globalisation in Norway before returning to Iceland and deciding to write a novel.

Her debut, The Creak on the Stairs, was published in 2018, becoming a bestseller in Iceland and going on to win the Blackbird Award and the Storytel Award for Best Crime Novel of the Year. It was published in English by Orenda Books in 2020, and became a number-one bestseller in ebook, shortlisting for Capital Crime’s Amazon Publishing Awards in two categories, and winning the CWA John Creasey New Blood Dagger.

Girls Who Lie, Night Shadows, You Can’t See Me and Boys Who Hurt soon followed suit, shortlisting for the CWA Crime in Translation Dagger, the Capital Crime Awards, and the Petrona Award for Best Scandinavian Crime Novel. You Can’t See Me won the Storyteller Award for Best Crime Novel of the Year in Iceland in 2023. In 2024, Eva won Iceland’s prestigious Crime Fiction Award, the Blood Drop, for Home before Dark and was shortlisted for the coveted Glass Key.

The Forbidden Iceland series, due to hit streaming services in Autumn 2026 via GlassRiver, has established Eva as one of Iceland’s bestselling and most distinguished crime writers, and her books are published in twenty-nine languages with more than a million copies sold.

My thoughts: This creeped me out a bit, especially when Karitas thinks someone has been in her flat while she’s out but she can’t prove it, and feels paranoid – that’s something I would not cope with, too many TV shows and books about someone living in your house without you knowing.

But it is a creepy story – the missing woman who spent time in the basement flat, the slightly weird (but ultimately quite sweet) old man upstairs, the next door neighbours who are definitely not right, the baby found buried in the old barn not far from the missing woman.

And it’s complicated, no one has lived at the farm in years, the people who worked there are hard to trace as there’s only nicknames to go on in some cases, the trace DNA evidence that throws uncertainty on the identities of the remains.

However, it is so well written, so compelling it completely hooks you and draws you in. I felt for Karitas and her little son, and for their landlord, who was clearly still mourning his lost family, both lost souls in need of support and found family.

This series is so, so good, you need to get into it if you love crime fiction, smart, but really human, detectives and cases that make you go 😮

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: Ghost Notes – Doug Johnstone

ramblingmads

The Skelf women have been keeping their heads down, running the family’s funeral directors and private-investigation businesses. But when a woman collapses at her husband’s funeral and is saved by Dorothy, she finds herself drawn into the murky world of ‘grief tech’ – a booming new industry that creates digital avatars of the dead.

Jenny’s latest case – a simple blackmail job for an old school friend – quickly spirals into chaos as the woman’s tangled love life pulls Jenny towards dangerous old habits.

Meanwhile, Hannah and her wife, Indy, are confronted by the unexpected arrival of Indy’s ex-boyfriend, claiming to be dying and eager for the Skelfs to arrange his funeral. But his arrival uncovers more ghosts from the past, and threatens to upend everything they’ve built.

As their cases collide and their personal lives spiral, the Skelfs face danger from all sides.

Doug Johnstone is the author of twenty novels, many of which have been bestsellers. The Space Between Us was chosen for BBC Two’s Between the Covers, while Black Hearts was shortlisted – and The Big Chill longlisted – for Theakston Crime Novel of the Year. Three of his books – A Dark Matter, Breakers and The Jump – have been shortlisted for the McIlvanney Prize.

Doug has taught creative writing or been writer in residence at universities, schools, writing retreats, festivals, prisons and a funeral home. He’s also been an arts journalist for 25 years.

He is a songwriter and musician with six albums and three EPs released, and he plays drums for the Fun Lovin’ Crime Writers, a band of crime writers. He’s also co-founder of the Scotland Writers Football Club and lives in Edinburgh with his family.

My thoughts: Skelfs, Skelfs, Skelfs!!! The Skelf family are back and I am delighted.

As always, Dorothy, Jenny and Hannah have their own cases, stemming in part from their roles as funeral directors, that impact on their own lives.

Dorothy revives a woman at her husband’s funeral, only to become embroiled in the family’s problems and an AI program that resurrects the dead, with troubling results.

Jenny is contacted by an old school friend, who needs her help with blackmail. But as Jenny gets involved, things take a nasty turn and end with a young man dead. Can Jenny work out who killed him and solve the blackmail too?

And we learn a lot more about Hannah’s wife Indy, as her ex, Yannis, appears at the Skelfs’ office, asking for them to arrange his funeral. He’s dying and wants to sort out a few things before he does. Unfortunately for Hannah and Indy he brings trouble with him.

As always, this is a fantastic read, written by an excellent writer. It might seem like the usual crime novel but there’s always something profound and thought provoking in every book. As the Skelfs blend crime solving and funerals, things surface that really make you pause and consider. Masterful. Delighted to have more Skelfs in my life.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: Love, After All – Ewald Arenz, translated by Rachel Ward

ramblingmads

When Clara meets Elias, she isn’t looking for love. Widowed and wary of being hurt again, she has built a careful life of work and quiet independence. Elias, an actor in his thirties, is trapped in a relationship that no longer feels real, more at ease slipping into a role than being himself.

Yet from the moment they meet, something genuine sparks between them – something neither has felt in years. They fall into step easily, sharing secrets, laughter and the sense of being seen. But there is the age difference, the miles between their worlds, and the lingering guilt that ties Clara to her past.

When a new job takes her to another part of the country, she ends the relationship before he can – certain that love like theirs cannot last. And then Elias falls ill, forcing them both to confront what truly matters.

Told with warmth, gentle humour and quiet insight, Love, After All is a luminous portrait of two people finding the courage to open their hearts again – proof that love, at any age, can still take us by surprise.

Ewald Arenz was born in Nuremberg in 1965, studied English, American literature and history, and now works as a teacher at a grammar school.

His novels and plays have received numerous awards. Tasting Sunlight was longlisted for the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize, shortlisted for the German Booksellers Best Novel Award, and featured on the Spiegel bestseller lists in both hardback and paperback for months.

In the UK, it was a BBC World Book Club pick. One Grand Summer won the German Booksellers Prize in 2021,and was a number one bestseller in Germany.

Ewald lives with his family near Fürth.

My thoughts: Clara and Elias fall in love in an instant, but can that sudden spark stay the course? Clara breaks things off to move to Hamburg for a new job, convinced it’s for the best.

But then Elias becomes sick and runs the risk of dying, dropping everything she rushes to be by his side in hospital. Can they find that connection again and this time make it work?

There’s other kinds of love here too, the love Clara and her brother share, the bond between Elias and his daughter, the relationship between Clara’s parents, the one she has with her mother, who has dementia. Even the love Elias has for his job as an actor, and Clara’s passion for photography. They might not be big, loud, grand passions, but they matter too and sustain the characters through good times and bad.

As Elias recovers from his brush with death, he and Clara must decide whether they truly belong together or not, and work out what that means for their future. Love is not always easy, but perhaps it is worth everything.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: Under the Blazing Sun – Jenny Lund Madsen, translated by Paul Russell Garrett

ramblingmads

Hannah is miserable. Her love life is in ruins, her contract demands a sequel to her bestselling crime debut – and she’s out of ideas.

After a mortifying TV interview, her agent ships her off to a sun-drenched Sicilian villa with a simple order: finish the book. No distractions. No excuses. But inspiration doesn’t strike – murder does.

When a night out ends in murder, Hannah finds herself at the centre of a murder investigation … again.

The police want her out of the way, and the only person who seems to believe her is a young but charming Italian police officer. That is, until she doesn’t.

Soon Hannah is chasing suspects, fleeing crime scenes, and doing whatever it takes to avoid becoming the next victim. She came to write a crime novel. Now she’s trapped inside one.

Jenny Lund Madsen is one of Denmark’s most acclaimed scriptwriters (including the international hits Rita and Follow the Money) and is known as an advocate for better representation for sexual and ethnic minorities in Danish TV and film. She made her debut as a playwright with the critically acclaimed Audition (Aarhus Teater) and her debut literary thriller, Thirty Days of Darkness, first in an addictive new series, won the Harald Mogensen Prize for Best Danish Crime Novel of the year, was shortlisted for the coveted Glass Key Award, longlisted for the CWA Crime in Translation Dagger, and won the Crime Fiction Lover Award for Best Crime Book in Translation. She lives in Denmark with her wife and young family.

My thoughts: Hannah wrote a brilliant crime novel after her involvement with a murder in Iceland, but now she’s stuck again. She’s under contract for another crime novel, but wants to go back to her literary fiction roots. So her agent, Bastian sends her to a friend’s villa in Sicily to write. 

And she gets involved in another murder. She’s even a suspect, which is crazy because she barely knows the victim. The police don’t believe her, her lawyer doesn’t seem bothered either. What can she do? Well, she’ll just have to solve the case and prove her own innocence. Obviously. And then write a book all about it.

Chaos ensues, especially after her Icelandic lover (with husband and children in tow) shows up, Hannah has a holiday fling with the one police officer who believes her, and after discovering whose house she’s staying, calls the one person she vowed never to, because she really needs help.

Hannah’s life is completely crazy, despite her insistence that it isn’t, and maybe she should stop leaving home as she seems to encounter murder everywhere she goes.

It’s actually a really funny book and would make a great movie on Netflix, the sort of film I would definitely watch (I love a crazy crime caper). More please!

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: Stop Dead – Katrín Júlíusdóttir, translated by Larissa Kyzer

ramblingmads

Icelandic detective-in-training Sigurdís is studying criminal psychology in the US, but her plans are thrown into disarray when she discovers that her boss and mentor, Garðar, has been put on leave from Reykjavík CID over his investigation into Sigurdís’s father’s death.

Returning to Iceland to deal with the fallout, Sigurdís finds herself pulled into a disturbing case: controversial TV personality Olga Einarsdóttir has been stabbed to death during the Reykjavík Marathon.

Struggling to locate a runner wearing bib number 1407, who was seen near the murdered woman during the race, the police soon discover that several masked runners were wearing the same number.

As the mystery deepens, Sigurdís and her fellow detective Unnar soon learn exactly how unpopular Olga was – not just with the interviewees she humiliated on live TV, but with her own son, her business partner, a widower who insists that she had a hand in his wife’s death, and her ex-husband, who died in suspicious circumstances thirty years ago…

As her exploration into Olga’s past becomes ever darker and more harrowing, Sigurdís must also face the truth about her own father, while searching for an attacker who will go to any lengths to cover up their crimes…

Katrín Júlíusdóttir has a political background and was a member of the Icelandic parliament from 2003 until 2016. Before she was elected to parliament, Katrín was an advisor and project manager at a tech company and a senior buyer and CEO in the retail sector. She worked from a young age in the fishing industry, was a store clerk and also worked the night shift at a pizza restaurant. She studied anthropology and has an MBA from Reykjavík University.

Katrín’s debut novel Dead Sweet received the Blackbird Award and was an Icelandic bestseller upon publication, with right sold in 15 countries. She is married to critically acclaimed author Bjarni M. Bjarnason, who encouraged her to start writing. They have four boys and live in Garðabær.

My thoughts: This was a cracking case, the murdered victim Olga, has a complicated and messy past, plenty of enemies, but someone hated her enough to plan and carry out a complicated scheme to kill her.

Called back to assist after her mentor is suspended, Sigurdís puts all her training to use in digging into Olga’s life and trying to find out which of the many people she’d hurt wanted her dead and was willing to risk doing it in such a public place.

Clever and full of twists, as the team also attempt to help their boss escape his suspension, Sigurdís is positive he didn’t mess up the investigation into her father’s death, as are her family. She also makes decisions about whether or not to move back to Iceland for good. 

Which bodes well for another installment in this excellent series. 

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: The Ossians – Doug Johnstone

ramblingmads

Connor is twenty-four, brilliant, broken, and out of control. He’s the swaggering frontman of The Ossians, a Scottish indie band on the brink of signing a major record deal.

Desperate to make their mark, they head off on a two-week winter tour across the cities and hinterlands of Scotland – a last-ditch attempt to find fame, purpose, and themselves. But the tour soon spirals into a surreal, chaotic odyssey.

From seedy bars and snowbound towns to a final, defining Glasgow gig, the band hurtles through a whirlwind of seagull massacres, botched drug deals, a mysterious stalker, radioactive beaches, bomb-testing ranges, epileptic fits, riotous Russian submariners, deadly storms, epiphanies, regular beatings and random shootings.

Raw, darkly funny and wild with energy … a gloriously anarchic story of rock’n’roll obsession, national identity and self-destruction, and what it means to belong – in a band, in a country, in a life unravelling at speed.

Doug Johnstone is the author of nineteen novels, many of which have been bestsellers. The Space Between Us was chosen for BBC Two’s Between the Covers, while six of his books have been shortlisted or longlisted for the Theakston Crime Novel of the Year or the McIlvanney Prize for Scottish Crime Novel of the Year.

Doug has taught creative writing or been writer in residence at universities, schools, writing retreats, festivals, prisons and a funeral directors. He’s also been an arts journalist for twenty-five years.

He is a songwriter and musician with ten albums released, and drummer for the Fun Lovin’ Crime Writers. He’s also co-founder of the Scotland Writers Football Club.

My thoughts: Connor reminds me of so many of my friends when we were in our early twenties, rootless, unsure of themselves, desperate to matter. Basically almost every twenty-something at some point. Only I don’t think they were all as self-destructive as Connor. Good thing he isn’t real because no one can survive on that many drugs and alcohol with no food or sleep for so long.

The Ossians, who might be headed for the big time, made up of Connor, his twin sister Kate, girlfriend Hannah and best mate Danny, plus manager Paul, are off on a tour of Scotland’s further reaches, some a bit off the beaten path.

Connor owes a rather nasty drug dealer a lot of money, and as he doesn’t have it, he’s now a delivery boy for said charmer, carting around a bag full of drugs and cash to exchange with a network of equally under the cosh strangers. Except he hasn’t told the others, and they’re definitely getting suspicious.

He’s also so off his face pretty much permanently, and like a lot of twenty-something’s thinks his every thought is profound and completely original. He says he’s on a quest to discover the real Scotland, but he isn’t very impressed by what he finds.

The rest of the band try to keep the tour going, but in between Connor’s wanderingd, getting punched in the face multiple times and some of the truly strange encounters they have, Hannah collapses on stage, Kate and Danny might be becoming a thing, and they keep having to cut gigs short, so they’re not exactly making money.

As they head to Glasgow and a make or break gig, Connor goes missing, and has an epiphany, one with consequences for them all. Perhaps this tour wasn’t the best idea.

Darkly comic, full of twists and weird moments, including a submarine full of Russians in a tiny Scottish town, this is a reminder of why it’s quite nice not to be in your twenties and unsure of where you belong anymore.

I can see the brilliance that is the Skelfs and the Enceladons trilogy emerging here, Johnstone’s wry view of the world is present and that dark humour that flows through all of his books. I missed this book on its first time out so it’s really nice to read it in this shiny reissue from the Orenda Books team.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.