Product Description

Ian Rankin and Michael Marshall are set to have their status challenged by debut Scottish author Stuart MacBride, an original and powerful new voice in thriller writing. It's DS Logan McRae's first day back on the job after a year off on the sick, and it couldn't get much worse. Four-year-old David Reid's body is discovered in a ditch, strangled, mutilated and a long time dead. There's a killer stalking the Granite City and the local media are baying for blood. If that wasn't enough, Logan also has to contend with a new boss, DI Insch, who doesn't suffer fools gladly and thinks everyone's a fool, and his own ex-girlfriend, the beautiful but chilly Isobel MacAlister, who also happens to be the chief pathologist. The only good news is WPC 'Ball Breaker' Watson, Logan's new guardian angel. The dead are piling up in the morgue almost as fast as the snow on the streets, and Logan knows time is running out. More children are going missing. More are going to die. If Logan isn't careful, he's going to end up joining them. Set in Aberdeen, where the rainy season lasts all year, criminal gangs vie for supremacy on the streets and the oil industry brings an influx of wealth and vice, this is a gritty, powerful and page-turning debut thriller by a writer with a wonderfully observant eye and a characteristically Scottish sense of gallows humour.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10350 in Books
• Published on: 2006-01-16
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 592 pages

Review
'Cold Granite is a powerful reminder that the best contemporary crime fiction is coming out of Scotland. Ferocious and funny, this is Tartan Noir at its best.' VAL MCDERMID 'A riveting and gruesome debut' TELEGRAPH 'The latest recruit to the splendid tartan army of crime writers is Stuart MacBride, and he appears with all guns blazing ! this intelligent, exciting police procedural should make the leading writers of the genre start looking over their shoulders.' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 'Stuart MacBride goes straight for the jugular with a tight, thrilling novel' GLASGOW HERALD 'MacBride is a confident writer ! does a good line in black humour and has a nose for the macabre. A promising debut' SCOTSMAN 'An impressive debut ! an edge-of-your-seat page-turner' PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 'A cracking new writer on the crime scene who hooks you from the first page and never lets you go. The action is ferocious and the pace unrelenting, and yet MacBride manages injections of black humour' NORTHERN ECHO

The Scotsman
"[Cold Granite] is a good read... a promising debut for MacBride and Aberdeen."

The Sunday Herald (June 12 2005)
"Brilliant... at times nightmarishly dark, at others hilariously funny.... Aberdeen's finest has arrived on the scene"

Customer Reviews

Cold Granite - fast, great debut
I got it home and couldn't put it down. It is a great read, dark, grisly but with some great humour. Regardless of what some people on here have said, I found it believable, the characters were all realistic and I thought that 'lazarus' was particularly good, as were both the DI's and good old 'ball-breaker'. I am half way through, and can't wait to get home and read a bit more...

A note to the people that are critical on here, have you any books in print? IF I had written this book, I would be so proud of it.

A fantastic (if somewhat gruesome) story, told well and really does grip me to the point where I have no option to read on and on, sleep, work or eating being the only thing interfering so far !

Good work to the author, and look forward to the next in the line (I really do hope that Logan becomes a long term character)

A cracking debut
As an Aberdonian born and bred, it is great to finally be able to read a crime novel that is set in the Granite City. The descriptions of Aberdeen and Aberdonians are accurate and well-observed and will particularly be enjoyed by those who know the city.

It is full of gritty characters and with a gripping plot it is a cracking good read - with a good helping of typical Aberdonian droll humour thrown in for good measure. This has definitely made me want to read "Dying Light" and any others that follow.

The New Kid On the Block
Having read all the Rebus and half way through the Skinners series this was a welcome alternative.

Great debut you instantly warmed to the central character particularly liked the fact that he isn't the all confident all knowing Skinner, Logan is a complex figure full of doubts in both his job ability and his personal life.

There's good element of him solving the cases without the sudden leap of inspiration he resolves things with diligent policework and trusting his damaged gut.

It is a fairly gruesome book but maybe fairly accurate of the times where only sensational murders do grab the headlines.

Certainly going to read his future novels and feel that for a debut novel this ticks a lot of boxes, particularly liked that in a similar vein to Red dragon this alouds to a previous case that has left the central character both physically and mentally scarred but without just spelling it out in one flashback.

The setting of Aberdeen I guess is as much a character as any in the book and with Taggart having sewn up Glasgow and Rebus and Skinner dominating Edinburgh, Logan could easily put Aberdeen on the Murder Map.