Killers have terrorized Aberdeen in the past—Detective Sergeant Logan McRae has the scars to prove it—but when body parts show up in a cargo container at the harbor they kick off Scotland’s largest manhunt in twenty years. Last time they were searching for Kenneth Wiseman, a brutal killer who terrified the country, who was eventually caught only to be acquitted eleven years later on a technicality. Now he’s gone missing, people are dying, and the police are certain he’s at work again. As the violence escalates, DS McRae is forced to work with the senior officers assigned to the original case who have returned to Aberdeen to finish what they started. With decades of secrets and lies coming to light, the only thing that’s certain is that the city will never be the same again. Once again, award–winning author Stuart MacBride fuses his signature dry wit with a dark and twisting plot to tell his most searing and accomplished story yet. *Starred Review* Apparently, rain and dark skies are what’s needed to cultivate crime writers: Scotland has a bumper crop, with growing talents such as MacBride joining veterans like Ian Rankin and Denise Mina in a fertile field. In MacBride’s fourth and most ambitious effort, Aberdeen’s Detective Sergeant Logan McRae and cohorts are trying to catch a serial killer. “The Flesher” wears a Margaret Thatcher mask and a butcher’s apron and has a butcher’s skill with blades: the victims are professionally bled, skinned, and sectioned. But the butchery doesn’t stop there: vacuum-packed pieces of human meat are turning up in shops. The good news is that the police think they know who the Flesher is. The bad news is that they don’t know where he is. McRae and his cranky crew—the hypertensive Insch, the icy McAllister, the unsentimental Steel—work together with the ease of a veteran cast, and MacBride adds a couple of new faces, including a BBC cameraman who’s filming the investigation, to keep the chemistry fresh. MacBride may have hit his stride in book one, but here he breaks into a run. The push-pull of tensions from within and without exacerbates a seemingly unsolvable case whose horrors take on staggering dimensions. But though the blood, booze, and rain do pour, persistent black humor sweetens the potion. With weather like that, you’d have to be able to laugh at just about anything. --Keir Graff Praise for Stuart MacBride “MacBride fills his Aberdeen fun house with hearty, clever, and usually profane humor that lightens every chapter. . . . As Ian Rankin’s long-running crime series begins to sound like a leaky bagpipe, Scottish writers such as MacBride arise to take up the kilt-waving in earnest.” — Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Bloodshot “MacBride deftly blends a suspenseful storyline and subversive wit. . . . MacBride offsets the grim goings-on with a cast of irrepressible characters whose banter is bawdy and crime-solving talents sublime.” — Booklist (starred review) on Bloodshot “Vivid . . . With a dose of sharp wit, MacBride effortlessly interweaves the plot strands while conjuring up three-dimensional characters.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review) on Bloodshot “What is there in the Scottish air that makes its new writers among the best in the business?” — Chicago Tribune on Dying Light “McRae is an interesting and subtle detective, and his investigation is both inventive and imaginative.” — The Dallas Morning News on Cold Granite Stuart MacBride is the author of three previous novels and the winner of the Crime Writers’ Association’s Dagger in the Library for his body of work. His first novel, Cold Granite , won the Barry Award and was shortlisted for the International Thriller Writers Award for Best First Novel, and his second, Dying Light , was shortlisted for the Barry Award. Both of them were also shortlisted for the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year. MacBride, a major bestseller in the United Kingdom, lives in Aberdeen, Scotland, with his wife.