Andrew Raymond has become one of the names readers look for in Scottish crime fiction thanks mainly to his DCI John Lomond series, set in Glasgow. The author writes at a rate of knots, but it seems that readers devour them just as quickly and the series has reached book eight with The Glowing Man, out now.
If you’ve been following along, Lomond has been in increasing conflict with Police Scotland, searching for corruption within its ranks and in other state bodies including the Royal Army. There has been a conspiratorial, looking-over-your-shoulder feel to recent novels. With The Glowing Man, things take a turn for the macabre. Lomond and his Major Investigations team find themselves in rural Ayrshire, to the south east of Glasgow, looking into the murder of a young woman.
When we say macabre, here’s why. On the corpse is a crown of burnt gorse, so this looks like a ritual killing. Then we find out that witnesses say the culprit seemed to glow in the night as he made his escape. It all sounds a touch folk horror – which seems entirely suitable for an October release.
Looking further into the local community, Lomond and his team notice that other women and children have also gone missing in previous years, but nobody has properly investigated. Could it mean there’s a serial killer operating in Ayrshire?
Lomond will do his best to track them down, but to his chagrin a special task force is assigned to the case. Someone with power and political influence appears to be trying to steer the investigation. If you’ve read books in this series before, you’ll know that Lomond isn’t one to back down. If there’s corruption at work, and someone is protecting the killer, he’s bloodyminded enough to take them on, even if it kills him.
Having started a new series about cases set in the Hebrides earlier this year with The Long Isle, and with this novel focusing on rural Ayrshire, it looks like Andrew Raymond wants to explore new environments in Scotland through his crime fiction. From gritty urban procedurals, maybe he’s taking a turn towards creepy rural noir. Whatever he’s doing, it seems to be working as the author has now sold over half a million Tartan noir novels.
Check out the images of the new book below, and grab yourself a copy with the buttons below. The Glowing Man is also available in good bookshops.
