Debut award greets first crime novel from Highland writer in this week's Star Read
First-time crime novelist Fulton Ross has scored a prestigious achievement with his first book – being listed for the Bloody Scotland Scottish Debut crime fiction novel of the year shortlist with The Unforgiven Dead.
This week’s Star Read is something special – and something different – as it combines a heart-stopping police investigation set near Fort William with a supernatural element that does nothing but add to the power of the world writer Fulton Ross has created.
Constable Angus MacNeil has struggled with the reality of having second sight since he was a child. But it is one of the reasons he is first on the scene of a brutal killing on a Highland shore at the start of a plot that explores a very real contemporary set of people as well as the rich past of mythology and Celtic tradition.
As a more usual reader of crime fiction rather than fantasy, I wasn’t sure this might work for me.
Instead, you find yourself hurtling deep into a story that becomes ever-more unique, yet believable, with rich characters – such as the vulnerable Gus himself, or his partner Ash, or the learned and caring family friend Gills, who may hold the key to so much of the journey Angus finds himself on to get close to the truth. And Ross paints pictures that let you see these scenes clearly unfolding in front of you.
“Ewan sat on dusty floorboards covered in mice droppings, his back against the wood-panelled wall. On the opposite wall of the bothy, a stag’s skull leered down at him ... His vision went blurry and when he regained focus, he saw his own head mounted on the wall where the stag’s head had been.”
The descriptions and characters bring the intricate plot to disturbingly real life and the writing of this first time writer, now a journalist in Northern Ireland, is exquisite yet spare at the same time.
The Unforgiven Dead (Inkshares, £20.99). Read an interview wth Fulton next week.
