In the Victorian era, Edinburgh prostitutes are being murdered by a particularly vicious killer. Inspector James McLevy has seen something similar before, but can the trail really be leading to a nationally-prominent figure?I read a lot of crime books, and being Scottish, I particularly enjoy tho...
It was a cold, bare chamber with incriminating smears on the walls; the only furniture was a single unsteady table, which had been hammered on so many times by the inspector’s fist that the legs splayed and were almost coming off their mastic moorings.Two chairs of the same ilk faced each other u...
He prepared to open his mouth and let rip, Sabbath or not a man had to work. God would understand as he did all things. This public house down by the waterfront was of the lowest sort, in fact more of a drinking den to which the authorities turned a blind eye since it gathered most of the riff-ra...
In the painting she stood by a long French window that allowed a sliver of moonlight to enter, and wore a purple gown – the colour indicating love of truth even unto martyrdom. The expression on canvas was in contrast to the one upon the pale flesh of the observer. The depicted lips had the hint ...
Two figures emerged in the lamplight, clanking towards the recently arrived Newcastle train. Their clothes proclaimed them to be railway cleaners, stoical and stocky, metal buckets bumping together as the two old women, Margaret Reid and Jenny Dunlop, reflected upon life, as they knew it. ‘Ye won...
Herman Melville, Typee Jean Brash leant back and let an envious wind blow through her hair so that it flew like a standard trailing behind as the coach clattered noisily in the Sabbath silence. They had gone hell for leather through Leith Links, found their way to Bonningt...