The final chapter in the story of Highland author's crime debut with a twist

Writer Fulton Ross is talking about his first crime novel The Unforgiven Dead in the week the book is launched with a flurry of excitement.

The book is a unique take on the murder thriller, as it is woven through with the supernatural. Its hero is a police constable who is troubled by second sight. And the writer - who was brought up in Lochaber - is talking about the process of creating the book, which has also made its presence felt by being shortlisted for the Debut prize for first crime novel.

The winner will be announced at the Bloody Scotland crime festival next month.

Fulton, who now lives in Northern Ireland with his family, delved back into how he has created the story of Constable Angus MacNeil and his life in the contemporary Highlands, but reaching back into its legends and folklore. It’s a subject the writer knows a lot about …

Fulton studied Scottish literature and history at Glasgow University before moving on to study for an MPhil in Medieval Celtic Studies. Though he considered moving on to a PhD, he opted for journalism, ultimately subediting for The Herald, among other papers, before moving to Northern Ireland and Belfast.

But when he looks back, he believes his interest in the stories and legends of Scotland’s past began early on.

“We used to go on car rides in Fort William when I was young. My grandparents lived in Invergarry ­ and it’s not a long journey ­­– but when I was younger, it seemed really long and my mum would put on a cassette of history or folk tales – and abridged stories of classics like Kidnapped.

“I was maybe thinking of those when I first came up with the idea for The Unforgiven Dead.

“It was at the back of my mind and they would be the first stories I really heard.

“My parents were big readers and they would read Greek myths to me when I was really young, so these were genuinely the first things I ever heard and subconsciously I think they were possibly always there.”

In the book, Angus is a policeman who is at the mercy of nightmares or visions and we find him as the book starts trying to shake the words that worry at him – “You could have saved her!” repeating in his head. Unable to sleep, he is the one who finds the body on the beach that launches the investigation into what appears a baffling and brutal killing.

But we know from the beginning that more is going on in the village of Glenruig, and it is Angus’s lifelong friend and mentor Gills MacMurdo, an expert in folkore, who realises that some ancient ritual may be at the heart of the unfolding events.

For Fulton, getting to the point of writing the fiction he always knew since he was a teenager he wanted to write, has taken some time.

“I lacked confidence up until my 20s,” Fulton admits, candidly. “Working in journalism gave me the building blocks, especially subediting! But I didn't go into journalism thinking I was going to be a subeditor, I was going to be breaking the stories! But I think that is more where my skills lay. Doing that for 10 years made me feel more confident to try writing fiction. And I said to myself that I wasn’t going to put any pressure on but just to have fun.”

His subediting skills came in handy …

“At one point the book was up to around 200,000 words! You try to get rid of all the extra words and make sure when you write scenes that they are not overly long.

“The writer Chris Brookmyre was a sub-editor too. It seems a lot of crime writers have come to writing through sub-editing. It’s definitely a tried and tested route into fiction. Another thing is not to be too precious about your own words. You put on your subediting head and you cut pages and paragraphs – it’s water or words under the bridge and you don’t worry too much!”

At first, Fulton found it easier to write away from home.

“When I began the book, I was looking after my eldest dropped him at nursery in Castlemilk before going off to do my shift at the Herald. Try and get an hour in there and go to the café in Waterstones on Sauchiehall Street and maybe do 40 minutes. I was writing in short sharp bursts and I got used to that that is now the way I work. It keeps it light and it keeps it fun. The idea is it is a luxury in some ways – I used to go to a café and read a book. Now I’m writing it keeps it fun and it keeps it fresh and that’s the way I can work.”

But when Covid came along, it added time to working on the book which by then Fulton was working on with American publishers Inkshares, who have brought it out this week.

“It was about 2016 that The Unforgiven Dead mark one was finished!

I was doing the traditional route, I was submitting it to agents and publishers, mainly agents. Not many publishers were accepting unsolicited manuscripts by that point. That can be tough because each agent has their own specifications. And I had plenty of knockbacks but some encouraging words as well, I think you need some sort of encouragement!

“I think if I was wasn’t getting any encouragement, I would have struggled. A couple of agents said: “Not quite for me this time, but keep going!”

Then Fulton saw something different.

“I spotted a competition in the Crime Writers Association newsletter for Inkshares in 2018 and I submitted the book.

“Inkshares are a Californian company and they are sort of traditional, but they use an analytics-based model as well!

“You upload your first few chapters to their website then they will look at readers who go onto their websites and see how often they turn the pages and things like that for feedback.

“I was one of the winners!

“I thought ‘That’s it! I’m done! And I thought I just had to dot a few ‘i’s’ and cross a few ‘t’s’... and be published. But it was not that way at all!”

It is seven years in total that Fulton has spent on The Unforgiven Dead – but in between there has been Covid and its delays – and writing a screenplay for a possible TV series of the novel!

Fulton explained: “I have been working with the same editor and we had a long discussion at the beginning and had a shared vision. We worked quite well together and knew what we were trying to achieve and to draw out certain supernatural elements to make it a really grounded thriller, not too ‘hokey’.

“We wanted it to appeal to – and not put off - crime reader purists who don’t like any sort of supernatural.

“One of the things that changed most during the pandemic was that we started developing it for TV.

“That is something Inkshares is really keen to do, to get their authors to adapt their own work.

“I wrote a pilot episode – an outline which is a big document you would send to TV companies, with outlines of the episodes and we crafted this six-part TV series.

“During the course of doing that, we found all this great material and we just had to feed that back into the book, so it’s kind of back to front, it’s usually the other way round!

“The book would be out and then you would adapt it.

“But again, it was fortuitous in a way, because then this good material was unearthed writing the TV series and went into the book.

“But again prolonged it.

“The book was finished last May so it has been a long time to publication and it was tough when the editor said to me ‘We’ll publish it in 2023’ when this was 2021,! Fulton laughed. “Whaaat? But that is almost standard for the publishing industry to have such long lead-in times. And with a debut, you want to make sure you have all your ducks in a row, because after a debut there is a sense that you have a book out every year or 18 months - so that is the plan!”

The good news is, a sequel is planned and Fulton will take the action to Barra as we meet Angus and others from The Unforgiven Dead again.

Adding the supernatural to the novel, has clearly been carefully weighed by Fulton and it literally adds another dimension to the murder investigation plot.

He said: “There are parallel investigations. The rational major investigation team are following the leads as a conventional team would, and then you have the irrational or supernatural investigation which is fronted by Gills. So these two competing investigations pull the reader in two different directions. My idea was that at some point the reader is asking themselves, ‘Is this a killer or supernatural agency behind this?’ And that is quite a difference for many crime books which have the police procedural type of investigation.”

And Fulton wanted to be sure he was accurate with his police action and consulted an expert who is also a writer, Adam McNamara, who is acknowledged by Fulton with thanks.”

The writer hopes that his readers will be inspired to delve into the folklore of Scottish and Highland culture – but for the moment, he is caught up in creating the sequel to his debut novel.

“I hope to finish the first draft of the follow-up later this year!”

The Unforgiven Dead by Fulton Ross (Inkshares, £20.99) is out now.

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