The Bone Clock (Detective Corstorphine #1)

The young oak tree with freshly budding leaves seemed unremarkable until his eyes travelled down to the wooden plaque set into the ground. The words sent an icy chill through his heart: They shall remember you.

In the Scottish Highlands where secrets settle like mist in the glens, Detective Inspector James Corstorphine is summoned to a macabre scene – a gamekeeper hanging from an ancient oak, ensnared by an intricate trap of wire and bone. Still grieving his wife's death, Corstorphine finds himself hunting a killer who crafts elaborate deathtraps from human remains – clockwork mechanisms that deliver murder with chilling precision.

When the victim's pregnant girlfriend Margo – her face a map of bruises – shares a reporter's notebook found among her boyfriend's possessions, Corstorphine discovers a connection to a journalist who died at the same hanging tree twenty years earlier. But Margo guards secrets of her own, and speaking the truth in this Highland community carries a deadly price.

As the deaths mount, Corstorphine must confront his own ghosts while racing to uncover what links the victims. His investigation leads to a devastating truth: the killer isn't just taking lives – they're delivering retribution decades in the making.

The first in the DI Corstorphine Scottish crime series, from a CWA New Blood Dagger Longlist author and McIlvanney Best Scottish Crime Novel Finalist will have you reading late into the night. The perfect page-turner for fans of LJ Ross, Ann Cleeves, and Val McDermid.

Previously published as Whirligig.