The Paisley-born author Andrew Raymond is the author of the Novak and Mitchell political thriller series, and the Duncan Grant spy thriller series. Crime fiction, however, he saw as an avenue to explore characters on the margins of society, dealing with social equality and injustice in ways that other genres can’t. So he created DCI Lomond, a Glasgow detective in touch with the kinds of people and places Andrew cares deeply about.
Like his political and espionage novels, the DCI Lomond series has seen huge popularity in digital formats. On 5 June 2025, The Bonnie Dead – the series opener – will appear in print for the first time, along with the three other titles featuring the detective. Once a Waterstones employee, Andrew will see his books on the selves alongside those of Ian Rankin and Val McDermid.
In The Bonnie Dead, John Lomond resumes his hunt for a child killer nicknamed The Sandman. Five years ago, a personal tragedy saw Lomond step back from the case. Now, there’s a curious new clue he must follow up, and a connection to a girl who was kidnapped and killed 20 years ago. Could the cold case be the breakthrough the DCI needs? And when will his nightmares end?
We asked Andrew to join us here at Crime Fiction Lover to talk about The Bonnie Dead, Glasgow, and all the things that make Scottish crime fiction special…
What are crime fiction lovers going to love about The Bonnie Dead?
The unravelling of two seemingly unconnected crimes – one past, one present – through a cast of characters you want to spend time with. The mystery is useless without the humans that allow that mystery to be solved.
Through the writing process I picture scales with story on one side and character on the other. They always have to be perfectly balanced at each major point in the story. That mental image keeps me on the right path.
Who is DCI Lomond and what’s the inspiration behind him?
There’s a lot of me in Lomond but I always picture him as being a few years older than me. Wiser, braver, still dealing with some darkness in his past. His tragic past was inspired by the birth of my son where everything ended up great, but there was a big fright for my wife and I along the way. It seemed like pure luck that we avoided a terrible tragedy and it got me thinking about a character that hadn’t been as lucky as us. I felt like that was someone I could understand. And whether a character is good or bad, it’s my job to write them as if I’m lobbying their case to God as to why they should be let into heaven because they did the ‘right’ thing. That goes equally for a young constable, or a corrupt senior officer, or a murderer. Even if they’re crazy, it has to be convincing otherwise their badness doesn’t carry any weight. That all starts from a place of empathy.
There are a lot of bad people in The Bonnie Dead and they all have their own stories to tell. Without that empathy from a storytelling perspective, they become boring ciphers of evil.
What’s he up against?
Lomond is fighting the past, really. He’s trying to solve this case that’s loomed over his entire detective career, while struggling to break free from this terrible grief and tragedy that’s consumed him. Solving this case is his chance to break free.
On top of that, though, he’s not just battling an evil killer, and battling his own demons, he’s fighting the internal political and power structures within Police Scotland. There’s not just a crime to solve. There’s corruption in Lomond’s way at every step which tests just how far he’s willing to go to secure justice.
Tell me about Glasgow and how you wanted to depict the place, as a setting and as a place where crime happens?
I started The Bonnie Dead dissatisfied with how I had experienced the city and its people depicted in other crime books. I never heard the voices I heard on the street on a daily basis. We never visited the rough and very dark places I had experienced. I wanted the whole spectrum of Glasgow life, from the highest to the lowest. From the most visible to the most invisible, and these characters are everywhere, not just Glasgow. I think that’s one of the things readers have responded to: you’re reading about characters we all see in our daily lives, and they all have stories to tell.
What are some of the bigger themes you wanted to explore in this novel, and across the series?
The overarching theme of the book is breaking free from the past and not allowing what’s come before to define who you are today. When you experience as much grief and loss as I have from a very young age, being able to write about a character coming through that experience felt visceral and urgent to me. It’s one of the great appeals of crime fiction to me, in that by the end of the story the mystery is solved and a little bit of justice has been secured in a world that’s mostly unjust. In that sense, crime fiction can be very life-affirming. If I can tell a great story with some great characters that you want to come back to and hang out with, while at the same time righting a few wrongs in this crazy world, then I consider my job done.
How has working in the book trade given you insights into, or ideas for, crime novels and what readers want?
Working in the book-retail industry was a huge help as I was evaluating dozens and dozens of books every day – that meant taking in cover design, reading blurbs, not to mention reading the books themselves. It was like a masters course in understanding genre and storytelling that really resonates with readers. In every book I picked up I was able to learn something: whether that was something that resonated with me, or something I wanted to avoid. Every book good or bad was teaching me something.
I was also pretty good at taking previously unknown books and championing them. I had a knack for finding one or two things about a book that mattered to readers and communicating that to them with very little time or table space. It made me quite sharp at writing blurbs and marketing materials. It’s a reality of the modern publishing industry that you have to be skilled at both, with or without a publisher.
Why do you think Scottish crime fiction, Tartan noir, has become so successful and what traits of this have you tried to bring to the fore in the Lomond books?
There’s something innate in the Scottish character I believe, of the scrappy underdog, marginalised characters grappling with social inequality. A people inherently distrustful of corrupt institutional power – be it the police, the government, the judicial system, or whatever else. From page one, your characters face an uphill struggle wherever they are in life. So the seeds of dramatic tension are baked into your setting from the outset. When your story is set in idyllic countryside where everyone is happy, that’s a tough task to create tension and conflict there. And to tell a really great story there has to be conflict everywhere – between your characters, and even within themselves. And there has to be an obstacle standing in the way of your protagonist.
In Tartan noir, despite the often beautiful surroundings, there’s dramatic tension and conflict everywhere, whether it’s in the present day, or historical.
Added to all that a country with a naturally sardonic and self-effacing sense of humour. That’s a great mix to have on the page, and a welcoming one for a reader. Scotland has all the fundamentals of great crime fiction in its DNA.
Which crime authors or books have inspired you, why, and what are you reading at the moment?
The Silence of the Lambs is it for me. I read it when I was way too young to understand it all. But what resonated for me was the language and how gripped I was by the storytelling.
I’m currently reading Alan Parks May God Forgive from his Harry McCoy series. No one captures 70s Glasgow as authentically as Alan.
What’s next for Andrew Raymond, and for DCI Lomond?
There’s always another Lomond coming, and I have two coming this summer. The first one is Better the Devil You Know which comes out early July. Then Lomond book six very soon after, before end of summer. I’ve been working on them close together.
After those, I’m working on the first in a new series set in the Hebrides which will be published by Vinci. It’s called The Long Isle and features Detective Constable Mairead Maclean. I felt like crime is becoming so focused on the DCI role, I wanted to explore a murder enquiry from the perspective of a younger, more junior detective. There are interesting power dynamics and conflict with a role like that. I’m planning on it doing for the Hebrides what Ann Cleeves did for Shetland.
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