‘The Mermaid's Cry’ by Kate Rhodes

Published by Orenda,
16 July 2026.
ISBN: 978-1-917764-32-2 (PB)

Inspector Ben Kitto of the Scilly Islands police force is in mourning for his wife, who died in a tragic accident a few months before this book begins. He has tried to escape painful memories by taking a year's leave from the police and moving to Penzance on the mainland with his small son Noah and his faithful wolfhound Shadow.

But crime dogs Ben's footsteps. Taking a sleepless Noah for a walk one night, he sees a figure snatch a baby from its stroller and throw it into the sea. He dives in and rescues the infant, who has a narrow escape but survives. He finds himself acclaimed as a hero, much against his will, and is invited by Penzance's head of detectives DCI Lynne Farraday to become SIO of the investigation. After another child is thrown into water and is put on life support, he reluctantly gives up his carpentry job and accepts. 

There's a clear connection with an old Cornish myth, the Mermaid of Zennor; small plaster mermaids and charms keep appearing, near where the children were snatched and in other locations. The investigation becomes entangled with the Burning Sky Festival, a major tourist attraction which has events taking place a few miles away in Zennor. Ben's first task as SIO is to narrow down the list of suspects, who all appear to be connected in some way with the festival. 

As devotees of this highly visual series have come to expect, there are plenty of well-realized characters to enjoy, some familiar, most new. From the Scillies, Ben Kitto's childhood friend and confidante Zoe is headlining the Burning Sky Festival and arrives a few days in advance; and his taciturn uncle Ray, who taught him the carpentry skills he is using, comes for a visit. 

Ben has made friends in Penzance: motherly Caitlin Freer and her more intense daughter Ruth, who run the day nursery Noah attends when Ben is working; his obliging and good-natured neighbour Jim Kernow; amiable Denny, his boss at the carpentry shop, and his generous wife Sarah; Mick, his songwriter colleague; and DCI Farraday, who has hidden depths. There's mysterious Arthur Goss, who makes musical boxes; Shannon, the almost-drowned baby's mother, and her own mother, well-organized Pauline. Less friendly are unscrupulous Luke Pascoe, local reporter who doesn't care who he tramples on to get a story, and resentful DS Carnforth, who dislikes his boss's people-friendly approach. Flamboyant and persistent Freya Lennox is a leading light in the festival. 

The locations in Penzance come to almost cinematic life too: Ben's shabby rented house which Ray takes in hand; the Freers' nursery, filled with colour and enthusiasm; the carpentry workshop, and Arthur Goss's cluttered but well organised shed; the down-at-heel estate where Shannon lives with her baby. And of course, Penzance itself, bursting with noisy summer holidaymakers. 

Regular readers may be glad to see Ben Kitto return home to his comfort zone, as it's hinted, he will, but a brief foray into previously uncharted territory is no bad thing, especially in Kate Rhodes's more than capable hands. The Mermaid's Cry will certainly gain her new readers alongside the many, like me, who are already hooked on the series.
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Reviewer: Lynne Patrick

Kate Rhodes was born in London. She has a PhD in modern American literature and has taught English at British and American universities. She spent several years working in the southern states of America, first in Texas, then at a liberal arts college in Florida. Kate’s first collection of poems Reversal was published in 2005, her second collection, The Alice Trap was published in 2008. The Guardian described her poems as “pared back and fast-moving, the short lines full of an energetic lightness of touch”. Kate has been awarded a Hawthornden Fellowship, and her poems have been shortlisted and won prizes in a number of competitions including the Bridport Prize and the Forward Prize. Crossbones Yard was Kate’s first crime novel. Hell Bay is the first of a new series featuring DI Ben Kitto. There are now nine books in this series. Kate is currently writing full-time and lives in Cambridge with her husband Dave Pescod, a writer and film maker.

www.katerhodesbooks.co.uk  

Lynne Patrick has been a writer ever since she could pick up a pen, and has enjoyed success with short stories, reviews and feature journalism, but never, alas, with a novel. She crossed to the dark side to become a publisher for a few years and is proud to have launched several careers which are now burgeoning. She lives in Oxfordshire in a house groaning with books, about half of them crime fiction. 

‘A Deadly Summer’ by Claire Back

Published by Cranthorpe Milner Publishers,
30 June 2026.
ISBN: ‏978-1803783802 (PB)

A Deadly Summer is an impressively assured debut by Claire Back, a longtime book club member and professed crime fiction and TV drama fan who recently was moved to try to write a murder mystery of her own. The result is a resounding success. Set in the author’s beloved Wales, it incorporates locations in Pembrokeshire where the author was born and raised.    

The story has two interlinking timelines—1984 and 2015—with Back impressively conveying the unique atmosphere and customs characterising these two periods. The novel begins with a brief prologue in the mid-eighties describing an unnamed man disposing of a corpse in a sinkhole on the Pembrokeshire Coastal Path and continues thirty years later—and only a short distance from the secret burial site—in the fictional seafront town of Penroth, where DS Nia Tremeyrick must identity a body found in an abandoned building and determine the manner of death. 

The High Cliff has fallen on hard times. Once the busiest and grandest of Penroth’s hotels, by 2015 it had been empty and derelict for decades. But recently it has come into the possession of a construction firm tasked with its renovation. The plan is to make it into expensive apartments. In clearing out the rubbish, workers find a corpse in the attic.    

Nia Tremeyrick is the typical flawed but endearing crime fiction protagonist. She feels unappreciated and undervalued by her colleagues in the police. Her ageing parents, struggling to survive in their isolated farm on the coast, rely heavily on Nia’s elder sister Jen, who resents all the responsibility for their care falling on her shoulders. Nia and her husband—who wanted children while she didn’t—are divorced. She hopes solving the case of the mysterious corpse will revive her career and bring her a measure of happiness. 

Back in the summer of 1984, we meet a different cast of characters who have links to the High Cliff Hotel. Cerys Pritchard is a bookish teenager who lives with her parents in the Victorian guesthouse they run in Penroth, one of twenty on its Promenade. Cerys does her best to help her parents with the backbreaking round of chores related to accommodating guests during the busy holiday season, when its eight double rooms are fully booked. All is going well until the cook, Mrs Bowen, must have a hip operation. She asks her niece to step in to help while she convalesces, having no idea of Kay Abbot’s true nature. The flirtatious and callous Kay encourages Cerys to join her in attending illicit parties at the derelict High Cliff Hotel, with tragic results.    

Early in the novel, preparing for her imminent departure for university, Cerys reads a Thomas Hardy novel, and The Deadly Summer can resemble that author in depicting the pitilessness of fate and how the best of intentions can result in the worst of outcomes. Back’s characters are convincingly drawn, the story’s plot is plausible, and the author expertly weaves together the past and present narratives in creating an unputdownable mystery. Back is sufficiently skilled to make us care about the cast of the story—and to regret the misfortunes that befall them—but her novel is a compelling and enjoyable read.
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Reviewer: Wendy Jones Nakanishi/aka Lea O’Harra.

Claire Back was born and raised in Pembrokeshire. Claire has always felt a deep connection to this part of the Welsh coastline. After a successful career in finance, she retrained to work in Early Years education and is currently writing her second novel - another mystery set in wartime Wales. A keen walker and gardener, she lives with her husband and two spaniels in Wrexham

 

Lea O’Harra.  An American by birth, did her postgraduate work in Britain – an MA in Lancaster and a doctorate at Edinburgh – and worked full-time for 36 years at a Japanese university. Since retiring in March 2020, she has spent part of each year in Lancaster and part in Takamatsu on Shikoku Island, her second home, with occasional visits to the States to see family and friends. An avid reader of crime fiction since childhood, as a university professor she wrote academic articles on it as a literary genre and then decided to try her hand at composing such stories herself, publishing the so-called ‘Inspector Inoue mystery series’ comprising three murder mysteries set in rural, contemporary Japan. The fourth and final book of this series will appear in spring 2026. She has also published two standalone crime fiction novels. 

‘Bad Chemistry’ by Nora Kelly

Published by Galileo Publishing,
15 May 2026.
ISBN: 978-1-91754343-9

The book is set in the early 1990s when history professor Gillian Adams has come from Vancouver to visit Cambridge, where she studied as an undergraduate. She is looking forward to revisiting old haunts and catching up with old friends, and hopefully to spend some time in a place she has fond memories of with her long-distance lover, Detective Chief Inspector Edward Gisborne, a detective at Scotland Yard. Gillian knows that Edward is currently involved in a murder investigation in London and respects that this must take priority, but she is pleased when he solves the difficult case in time to join her. 

Unfortunately, crime does not confine itself to London, and when Edward is visiting an old colleague and friend, Detective Chief Superintendent Reynard ‘Fox’ Hardy, who is a detective in the Cambridge police force, news comes in of a suspicious death at the university Chemistry Building.

Edward accompanies Hardy to visit the scene of crime and it soon becomes evident that death is not only suspicious but is almost certainly murder. The victim is Wendy Fowler, a talented, hard-working and fiercely ambitious young researcher, who is found in the building’s cold room, frozen and with a head wound. Because the investigation involves the university and is that of an attractive young woman, it is high profile, and Hardy is eager for Edward to assist him in solving it. Gillian is disappointed that her special time with Edward is curtailed, but she too has a personal reason for wanting the murder solved, because Wendy had been a friend of some of her friends and a fellow volunteer with them at the Pregnancy Information Service, which is part of the Cambridge Counselling Centre. 

There are a confusingly large number of potential motives and possible murderers. In the Chemistry department there are the academics whose offices were situated beneath Wendy’s: they had been flooded three times by water coming from Wendy’s office, and most people blamed this on her carelessness. There is also a great deal of professional jealousy about a rising star in the research world. Also, in a department where the senior academics are predominantly male, there is deep rooted resentment that a young woman is getting research funding and achieving such original and exciting work.

However, it is equally possible that the murder was linked to Wendy’s personal life, which is also complicated and may have given cause for jealousy. Or it may be linked to her work with the Pregnancy Information Service, which provides a valuable service to many desperate women, but which is condemned by the ‘pro life’ fanatics and by domineering and misogynistic men. As the detectives attempt to unravel the strands of Wendy’s life and try to decide which of them led to her murder, another death is discovered and the investigation takes on a different direction and a more urgent and far more dangerous aspect. 

Bad Chemistry is the third book in the series featuring Gillian Adams. It is an interesting book that describes attitudes prevailing thirty-five years ago, when women were fighting for equal opportunities and respect in an extremely male-oriented world, and it is full of lively and often eccentric characters. Gillian and Edward are engaging protagonists and the plot is complex and well paced. This is an enjoyable read which I recommend for readers who enjoy books set in an academic setting in the recent past.
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Reviewer: Carol Westron

Nora Hickson Kelly was born in the United States in 1945. She grew up in Jersey and spent summers on Cape Cod. She now divides her time between Cambridge and Vancouver. She teaches part-time and is at work on her new novel. She had one son. She has written five crime novels featuring Gillian Adams.

Carol Westron is a Golden Age expert who has written many articles on the subject and given papers at several conferences. She is the author of several series: contemporary detective stories and police procedurals, comedy crime and Victorian Murder Mysteries. Her most recent publications are Paddling in the Dead Sea and Delivering Lazarus, books 2 and 3 of the Galmouth Mysteries, the series which began with The Fragility of Poppies. Her most recent books is The Apples of Sodom.

 www.carolwestron.com 

The latest from Bloody Scotland: 18 - 20 September 2026

Crime in the Spotlight 2026

Crime in the Spotlight is such an important part of our festival. The initiative gives new and emerging authors the chance to read a sample of their work out before one of Bloody Scotland's packed Albert Halls sessions. Our Spotlighters also get the opportunity to sign their novels alongside the session's main act afterwards.

Here's a list of our Spotlighters and the events they will appear at... 

Friday 18th September

Pat McTaggart will read at Death on the Island

Kevan Christie will read at In Conversation: Chris Brookmyre & Abir Mukherjee

Colette Lewis will read at Denise Mina Presents Lucy Foley

Ryan MacDonald will read at The Kill Switch: Robert Peston

NJ Hatton will read at Denise Mina presents Lee Child (sold out)

Victoria West will read at Richard Osman in conversation with Mark Billingham (sold out)

Saturday 19th September
Emilie Castore & Eve Goodfellow will read at Nice and Cosy
Wes Browne will read at Denise Mina presents SA Cosby 
Angela Clegg will read at Femmes Fatales
Jen L Crow will read at Denise Mina presents Jane Harper & Jane Casey
Kelly Mancaruso will read at In Conversation: Steve Cavanagh & Nadine Matheson
Elspeth Latimer will read at Denise Mina presents Tana French
Alys Cummins will read at Jeremy Vine & Matthew Sweet

Sunday 20th September
Chris Lerpiniere will read at In Conversation: Cai Jun & Yrsa Sigurðardóttir
Ruth Knafo Setton will read at In Conversation: Gregg Hurwitz & Robert Bryndza 
Kathryn Sharman will read at Denise Mina Presents Ardal O'Hanlon
Alison Aitchison will read at Dept Q
Sam Dounis will read at A History of Modern Britain in Twenty Murders Robert Parker will read at In Conversation: Val McDermid & Denise Mina

Crime in the Spotlight is sponsored by The Open University. You can read more about this year's Crime in the Spotlight over on our Blog. 

In Conversation: Cai Jun and Yrsa Sigurðardóttir
Sunday 20th September - 10:30am

Bloody Scotland are proud to welcome one of Asia’s most

prolific and popular crime authors to Stirling. Cai Jun is the leading

crime and horror writer in China – their answer to Stephen King – and

his books have sold an incredible 14 million copies worldwide.

Alongside Cai Jun will be the Queen of Icelandic Noir, the wonderful Yrsa Sigurðardóttir whose multi-award-winning books have been translated into more than 30 languages. She too leans to the darker side of crime with a tinge of horror thrown in. Cai Jun and Yrsa will be interviewed by Craig Sisterson.

Evil Under the Sun
Friday 18th September - 20:15pm

Glamour, luxury and exotic locations are at the heart of three red-hot
thrillers all rich in intrigue while being fabulously glitzy and
gripping.

A sun-drenched Tuscan villa is the setting for simmering tension and family intrigue in Kate Gray’s sizzling novel Welcome to the Family. Scandal and secrets threaten to destroy a glittering birthday party in Foluso Agbaje’s hugely suspenseful family drama, The Talk of the Party. Wild, opulent parties under the scorching Greek summer sun lead to resentment and murder in the pulsating Dead Heat by Sabine Durrant. This event will be chaired by Arusa Qureshi..

Murder at the Edge of the World:
Saturday 19th September - 21:45pm

Meet three authors who have skilfully harnessed wild locations at
opposite extremes of the world to create vivid and atmospheric crime
thrillers.

A mutilated body rises from the icy waters of Norway’s unforgiving Arctic north, in Ørjan Karlsson’s chilling thriller Into the Dark. Malcolm Kempt’s haunting debut A Gift Before Dying sees a disgraced Arctic Circle cop seek justice for a murdered girl. A cabin deep in the woods of New Zealand holds the secrets to murder in The Vanishing Place, the astonishing debut from Zoë Rankin. This event will be chaired by author Shane McGinley.

Helsinki Noir
Saturday 19th September - 20:15pm

As part of a collaboration with the Helsinki Noir festival, we are
delighted to welcome three of Finland’s leading crime writers to
Stirling.

The Winter Job is a darkly humorous slice of Finnish Noir about friendship, love and death from festival favourite Antti Tuomainen. A journalist uncovers evidence of a serial killer stalking Helsinki’s streets in Martta Kaukonen’s breathless Meet Me in the Darkness. International bestseller Satu Rämö is the creator of “Nordic Blue”, a warmer hue of Scandi Noir, and her latest is The Secrets from the Deep. This event will be chaired by Reetta Miettinen.

Interview with James Oswald

This month, we caught up with crime novelist and farmer, James Oswald, to find out more about his latest novel, The Violent Hour. 

Can you tell us about The Violent Hour and your inspiration for the book? 

The story opens with the discovery of a violent murder, or the body parts left behind after a violent murder in Edinburgh. The problem is that even though the police have got all the body parts, they can't identify the victim, which makes everything quite difficult. There's a lot of pressure to solve the case because it's festival season and the city is full of tourists - so there's a huge pressure on the police. The reason nobody knows who this person is is because the victim's birth was never registered, so, he's a mysterious character for that reason.

I can't say much more without giving too much away but I will say that it's a typical Inspector McLean book, so nothing in this case is straightforward! 

This is the 15th book in the Inspector McLean series, which blends crime and the supernatural together. Can you tell us how the series came about? 

I wrote a comic script back in the early 90s. It wasn't really a police story, but it had a police officer in it who could see the ghosts - and that was Tony McLean.

I used to live in Aberdeen and knew the author Stuart McBride very well. When he first got published he got in touch with me and said, crime fiction's where it's at - you should write that. That's when I thought, well, I've got this police character and his unique selling point is that even though he's reluctant to believe in ghosts and the supernatural - he sees it, so he has that kind of built-in conflict. I tried him out in a few short stories, one of which was called Natural Causes. I ended up expanding that short story into the novel of the same name. 

Edinburgh is very much a character in these books. Do you enjoy writing about the city?

I find it quite increasingly difficult because I don't get out much. Most of my memories of Edinburgh are from the turn of the century. I used to work in various jobs around the city and a lot of the references and locations in the books are places near where I worked because I'd go out and walk around during my lunch hour. Edinburgh has changed so much since then, so every so often I go down and have a wander around and think, oh, that building's not there any more. I have been very rude about one of the hotels a couple of times. Tony McLean is not a fan!

You'll be joining us at Bloody Scotland again this year as part of our Call the Polis event. What is it about the festival that makes it so special? 

I've been to every Bloody Scotland since it started, and the second festival was my first one as a published author, so I do feel a certain attachment to it. It's such a friendly festival and they always seem to manage to come up with a really good programme, year after year. I love Crime in the Spotlight too - it's such a big opportunity for new authors. 

It also helps that it's only three quarters an hour down the road from me, so it's nice and local!

The Violent Hour by James Oswald

is published by Wildfire and is out now. You can purchase a copy, here: https://linktr.ee/ViolentHour

James will appear on stage as part of our
Call the Polis panel on
Saturday the 19th of September at 11.30am, alongside,

 Caro Ramsay and Andrew James Greig

Fib Whisky

This year, we’ll be toasting Bloody Scotland with something very special. Our friends over at Fib Whisky have made us our very own whisky for the second year running – and it’s a very special bottle indeed! 

We caught up with Fib’s Director, Iain Mundy to find out more about this perfect pairing.

“We’re delighted to provide the official festival dram again for this year's Bloody Scotland Festival! We buy casks from all kinds of distilleries around Scotland. The one we've used this year for Bloody Scotland is from Glen Spey Distillery and it's 11 years old. It's one that a lot of people don't get to try normally because it's predominantly used for blending. It’s a single malt, but they'll usually stick it in blends like Johnny Walker, so it's only through independent companies like us, and other independent bottlers, that people actually get the chance to try it as a single malt which is really cool because it's a really nice whisky.

Fib was the brainchild of two passionate whisky fans, the late Aedan Burt and Iain Mundy, who were long-time friends and whisky enthusiasts. The independent bottlers buy whisky from many different distilleries, then carry out finishing and occasionally blending experiments to create something new and exciting.

"We've had the Bloody Scotland whisky in Oloroso Sherry for about six months. We haven't bottled the full cask. We've only made a hundred exclusive bottles and they're all numbered from one to a hundred. Once the cask runs out, that will be it done and there won't be another cask that's exactly like it - so when it's gone, it's gone! Usually when you see whisky in the supermarket, it will be diluted down to 40, 43 or 46%. But this time we haven't bothered -  it was just really nice as it was. It's completely natural, unfiltered and it's coming in at natural strength, which is 58.3 %. So it has a proper punch this time!"

You can sample a dram of Bloody Scotland's official whisky at Bloody Scotland Prizes and Drinks Reception at the Church of the Holy Rude on Friday the 18th of September. 

View the Bloody Scotland programme, here

‘The Games We Play’ by Claire Quinn

Published by Harper North,
30 July 2026. 
ISBN: 978-0-00-881203-4 (PB)

Ali, Erin and Soph grew up in Toppington village, attended the same school and partied together.  In their teens they had gone on a school trip to Mallorca where an untoward incident created a terrible secret each of them had sworn never to reveal to anyone. 

Now in their early thirties the girls are still practically joined at the hip. Each has their own problems. Ali is getting married in a month and is worried that her future husband, Dan, still prefers his first wife, Lucy.  Soph is desperate to get pregnant and assumes that her husband, Thomas, wants a baby as much as she does. Following a disastrous event at one of their teenage parties, Erin has found it impossible to commit to a relationship with any man she meets. She is also desperately worried about her brother who has had a stroke. 

A month before her wedding Ali organises one of the girls’ annual weekends.  Partners are also invited so Ali is bringing Dan, Soph is bringing Thomas and Erin is bringing her new boyfriend, Joe, whom the others have yet to meet. After supper on Friday night, they walk to a local pub and get drunk. At Ali and Joe’s suggestion they swop partners for the walk home during which they must share a secret that they have never told anyone else. Of course, the inevitable happens and bits of information get shared that cause trouble for the girls, particularly Soph. Worse still when they return from the pub Joe enquires innocently if they had heard that the body of Liam Croft - a guy from Toppington who went missing in Mallorca fifteen years ago - had been found by the Spanish police. The tension rises immediately. 

As the story progresses, we learn more about the girls’ backgrounds, their earlier years, and their hopes and fears for the future. Is Dan as clever, loving and straightforward as he appears to be? Lucy says not but Ali doesn’t believe her. Is Thomas really such a perfect husband? Is Joe’s role entirely innocent?  What is the girls’ secret, and will they manage to keep it hidden between themselves? Is their love for each other genuine? Or, is it founded on expediency and the fear that if they don’t stick together their past is likely to ruin their futures? This well-observed book with its explosive end compels you to finish it as soon as you can because you need to find the answers to all these questions. 
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Reviewer Angela Crowther. 

Claire Quinn studied Law at King’s College London, Claire returned home to the North West. She worked in Manchester for an international law firm for over fifteen years before making a switch to country life in the Cotswolds.Claire Quinn’s debut novel, The Games We Play, is a psychological thriller exploring friendship, rivalry, and the consequences of long-held secrets. 

Angela Crowther is a retired scientist.  She has published many scientific papers but, as yet, no crime fiction.  In her spare time Angela belongs to a Handbell Ringing group, goes country dancing and enjoys listening to music, particularly the operas of Verdi and Wagner.

‘Deliverance’ by Saima Mir

Published by Point Blank,
2 July 2026. 
ISBN 978-1-83643-189-3 (PB)

Jia Kahn is the unflappable head of the Kahn family. Helped by close family members, brother Benjamin and Cousin Idris and the network of women she has incorporated into the business.  Jia oversees a world-wide criminal enterprise from the Yorkshire Town where she was born.  Having rivals killed and supervising the acquisition and transfer of massive amounts of additive drugs has become second nature to her.  However, pregnant with her third child, Jia now wishes to legitimise her empire and to continue to support her work for poor Muslims, particularly the women, who are despised and maltreated by the males in their families.  The acquisition of the Reco mine in Peshawar, currently controlled by a British company, will go a long way to achieve Jia’s aims. The mine is unbelievably rich in copper and gold and will hopefully provide funds for her to leave the criminal world and still continue to do the social work she yearns to support. 

Unfortunately, whilst other crooks have acknowledged Jia’s place at the top of the criminal hierarchy, one man, Yanick Kaplan has flatly refused to do so.  Yanick wants the Reco mine that Jia has her eyes on. The situation becomes serious when the mine owner’s daughter is kidnapped along with five other girls.  It gets worse when two of the British troops attempting to rescue the girls are also taken hostage. Advocates for the British government ask Jia for help. The showdown comes in New York when Jia is staying with Adam Diaz, a barrister friend and admirer. 

Saima Mir writes with a compellingly authentic voice. Somehow, she manages to blend brutality and care for her family and others less fortunate than herself in a manner that sounds completely natural. Jia Khan is a remarkable woman, warm and generous one minute, ruthless the next. She has no illusions about the prejudice that many have towards her race and Muslim religion and doesn’t hesitate to put others right when appropriate. She loves her two sons Ahad and Lirian, though her attitude towards her husband Elyas, is sometimes ambivalent. Elyas is an investigative journalist whose love for Jia ensures that he turns a blind eye to her activities. 

Deliverance is the last book in the Kahn Trilogy. It can easily be read on its own, but I wish I had read The Kahn and Vengeance, the two previous books, first. They would have provided more of Jia’s complex background and a greater understanding of the motivations and the internal and external struggles of Jia and her family. Her relationship with her father, murdered in a previous part of the trilogy, was clearly very important, as was her early career as a barrister and the fact that her father’s first marriage had produced an elder sister whom Jia finally meets properly in Deliverance. Whether you read just one book, or all three, you are in for a treat.
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Reviewer Angela Crowther 

Saima Mir is an award-winning journalist and writer. She has written for The Guardian, The Times, The Independent and The Daily Telegraph, and worked for the BBC.Her work appeared in the anthology, It’s Not About the Burqa in 2019, and The Best Most Awful Job in 2020. Her novel The Khan is being published by Point Blank. The Khan has been optioned by BBC Studios.Saima is a recipient of The Commonwealth Broadcast Association World View Award, and The K Blundell Trust Award. Saima’s work has been longlisted for The SI Leeds Literary Prize, and The Bath Novel Award. 

Angela Crowther is a retired scientist.  She has published many scientific papers but, as yet, no crime fiction.  In her spare time Angela belongs to a Handbell Ringing group, goes country dancing and enjoys listening to music, particularly the operas of Verdi and Wagner.

 

Harrogate International Festivals

is delighted to announce that 
The Frozen People by Elly Griffiths 
has won the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award 2026, the UK and Ireland’s most prestigious crime fiction award!

 

The Frozen People is the first book in a new series with a time-travelling spin, as an unsolved mystery takes cold cases investigator Ali Dawson back to the frozen Victorian London of January 1850. Crime fiction phenomenon Elly Griffiths has been shortlisted for the Award eight times and was Highly Commended in 2023 for The Locked Room. She is the author of the Dr Ruth Galloway Mysteries; the Brighton Mysteries and the Detective Harbinder Kaur series.

Two more winners were also announced:

 Frances Crawford from Glasgow won the McDermid Debut Award for her crime novel, A Bad, Bad Place, a gritty and atmospheric thriller set in 1970s Glasgow about a 12-year-old dog walker who discovers the body of a murdered woman - the daughter of a local gangster – and becomes irrevocably tangled up in the police investigation.

Bestselling US novelist, David Baldacci, received the Theakston Old Peculier Outstanding Contribution Award in recognition for his exceptional contribution to the crime thriller genre, honouring a remarkable career that has captivated millions of readers worldwide and helped shape modern suspense fiction.

The winners were revealed on the opening night of the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival, Thursday 23 July at an event hosted by broadcaster Steph McGovern.

Further information about all the winning titles and authors, including press releases and bios, is available to download HERE.

‘Sherlock Holmes and the Aeronauts’ by Linda Stratmann

Published by Sapere Books,
5 June 2026.
ISBN: 978-1-80055389-7 (PB

These early adventures of Sherlock Holmes are narrated by Arthur Stamford, the young doctor who was Holmes biographer before he met Watson. Now that Stamford has completed his medical training, he is a young junior surgeon at Bart’s hospital, which means that he has less time to assist Holmes with his investigations. Holmes has started to advertise himself as a consulting detective but has not yet fully established himself in his chosen profession, although his reputation is increasingly respected. 

Holmes and Stamford meet occasionally and still have an amicable relationship but have little time to work together until a case occurs that involves them both. At first, it seems like an ordinary day for Stamford when a young man is brought into the hospital after he was struck by a falling roof tile. When the man regains consciousness, he appears confused and cannot remember his name. Stamford has him admitted to a ward and is confident that his patient will soon recover, but he is concerned when he discovers that a senior surgeon has allowed the young man to leave with a man who claimed to be his friend. Unfortunately, nobody has recorded either of the young men’s names or addresses. Stamford does not consider the matter any further until Inspector Lestrade of Scotland asks him to come to the mortuary to identify a young man who had been run down by a delivery wagon and whose body shows signs of treatment for recent injuries. The victim is indeed the unfortunate man that Stamford had treated, but there is no sign of the man who removed the patient from the hospital. When Stamford leaves the mortuary, Lestrade asks him to speak to the father of the dead man, who has identified the victim as Aubrey Soames, and to Stamford’s surprise Holmes is also present. Aubrey Soames’ father, Sir Finlay Soames, is a senior official at the War Office, and Aubrey had been an outstanding mathematician who tutored young men facing examinations. Lestrade is content to assume that Aubrey’s death was an accident, presuming that Aubrey’s companion had been careless and had panicked and abandoned him when he was struck by the wagon. However, Sir Finlay is unconvinced and employs Holmes to investigate his son’s death. Because of Sir Finlay’s national importance, Stamford is given leave from the hospital to assist in the investigation. 

Stamford has one clue to kickstart the investigation. When Aubrey was regaining consciousness, he had muttered something about what Stamford assumed was ‘a calendar’, but Sir Finlay suggests that he had referred to Callender, because Lord Callender is a close family friend. Holmes and Stamford go to visit Lord Callender and arrive just in time to rescue the noble adventurer when he is trapped by the ropes of his flagpole after he had an accident while trying to make repairs to his hot air balloon. Lord Callender is an elderly, heavily built man who still has an ebullient love for adventure and tries to live his life as if he was a character in the newly published Adventure Magazine. Lord Callender tells them that he does not know why Aubrey Soames had muttered his name but says that the young mathematician had been helping him to perfect the design of a balloon that he intends to enter in a cross channel competition with a significant cash prize. Lord Callender cares less about the money than the adventure and the joy of being an innovator, but he has two major problems, one is the need to keep his design a secret, and the other is that his competition entry requires a pilot to try out the balloon who is strong but not tall or heavy. Lord Callender and his daughter, Lady Grace, who acts as his chief mechanic, are both too tall to pilot the balloon and, to Stamford’s dismay, it is obvious that they think he is an ideal candidate for the job. Stamford is not a coward, but this sort of risk horrifies him. However, he is the son of poor parents who have made many sacrifices to help him to train as a surgeon, and he knows that the generous payment that Lord Callender is offering will move him nearer to his ambition of purchasing his own medical practice.

Holmes returns to London to continue investigations there, but Stamford stays at the Callender estate to trial the balloon as soon as the weather is suitable. During this time, he tries to discover whether Aubrey Soames’ death is connected to Lord Callender’s adventurous ambitions, and if so whether it is because of a villainous ballooning rival or connected with the school of ballooning at Woolwich Arsenal, who are considering the military potential of balloon flight. Despite Stamford’s best efforts, another death occurs, and the young surgeon is in great danger as the killer grows increasingly desperate. 

Sherlock Holmes and the Aeronauts is the eleventh book in the series featuring Stamford and Holmes. Stamford is an engaging narrator and his interaction with the young Holmes reveals the great detective as a reserved and driven but fundamentally decent man. The plot is well constructed and the historical details are impeccable. This is an interesting addition to an excellent series, which I recommend.
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Reviewer: Carol Westron 

Linda Stratmann was born in Leicester in 1948 and first started scribbling stories and poems at the age of six. She became interested in true crime when watching Edgar Lustgarten on TV in the 1950s. Linda attended Wyggeston Girls Grammar School, trained to be a chemist’s dispenser, and later studied at Newcastle University where she obtained a first in Psychology. She then spent 27 years in the civil service before leaving to devote her time to writing. Linda loves spending time in libraries and archives and really enjoys giving talks on her subject.   

www.lindastratmann.com  

Carol Westron is a Golden Age expert who has written many articles on the subject and given papers at several conferences. She is the author of several series: contemporary detective stories and police procedurals, comedy crime and Victorian Murder Mysteries. Her most recent publications are Paddling in the Dead Sea and Delivering Lazarus, books 2 and 3 of the Galmouth Mysteries, the series which began with The Fragility of Poppies. Carol’s most recent books is the The Apples of Sodom  

www.carolwestron.com