Great read!

Having binged all of JD Kirk’s crime novels I have been hunting for my next crime thriller fix. Finally found it! This is excellent. Montseath’s narration is top notch and really brings the story to life. About to start on book 2!

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excellent

loved the narration this story had me laughing,holding my breath and sitting in my car getting later and later for work with each chapter.

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Terrific story, can’t wait for rest of the series

A really good listen! The narration is perfect, the characters are believable and the story is easy to follow and a great tale.
Having listened to some very convoluted police procedural books recently and been so frustrated with the pause/rewind/re-listen process, I thought I’d had enough, but this has really drawn me back in to the genre.
I have already downloaded the next in the series, and have only paused listening to write this review before I start it!

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Absolutely Brilliant!

This has to be one of THE best stories I have listened to in years...witty, clever and extremely well written. I just hope that Stuart has spent the lockdown writing numerous sequels.
I had started to become frustrated with the endless crime stories that have the usual jaded detective, with failed marriages, drink problems and anger issues, repetitive, boring and predictable with lazy writing and unimaginative characters. This definitely breaks with the tired old formula. His development of the story keeps you guessing and leaves you wanting more. The humour is clever and kept me chuckling during my boring drives to work. Please get another published quickly!

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9 people found this helpful

Buy this now, it's fantastic

I had high hopes for this book and I was delighted beyond my expectations with the storyline, and David Monteath, of course, was his usual brilliant self.
This will hopefully be the first of many books by Stuart Johnstone, it was everything you would expect from the description and then some.
Buy it now, if you love Scottish Crime along the lines of J D Kirk and Denzil Meyrick.

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13 people found this helpful

Highly recommend

Thank you Stuart for writing this book and David for reading it. Very exciting with an unexpected twist , please hurry and write another book. In a difficult world this was exactly what I needed, a great read.

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2 people found this helpful

Another good read by Stuart

The plot keeps you guessing whats been going on to get the characters to this point in the story. The story keeps you interested to what is going on in a small village in the highlands of Scotland. The side kick character gives a light relief to the serious nature of the story and the main characters predicament. Well read by the narrator but not sure he got me into all the characters. Good all round though.

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Unusual, absorbing and quirky police procedural

This has a strong and appealing main character and a quirky attitude; the plot develops gradually and satisfyingly along multiple strands, with interesting characters and some nice tricks of narrative shifting between past and present. Some flashes of humour lighten serious things, and there’s some enjoyable uncertainty about exactly what we’re dealing with. I was intrigued throughout, and look forward to a sequel.

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.

I got so into this book listened for hours of course the narrator was excellent as always and the storyline had everything. The characters were vivid. I can't praise this enough.

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It held my attention

Despite the story not being entirely linear (and really needing more space between the non-linear events) I really enjoyed this, my first from Stuart Johnstone. There were various jumps between past events and present ones with an explanation only coming later. Did I miss the detective getting into one significant difficulty? No, the scenario was only narrated much later on, for a little while I thought I had lost my marbles. However, once I had worked out the style I thoroughly enjoyed the story.

The detective is flawed though whether he is a victim of others or happy to bend the rules is open to interpretation. No matter what, I hope he's here to stay a while longer.

The narrator, David Monteath, was excellent, another great to add to my stable of preferred narrators which is now up to three!

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