LONGLISTED FOR THE McILVANNEY PRIZE
‘I enjoyed my first day at primary school. Of course, I didn’t know then that this was the first day of a suffocating friendship with a psychopath, a friendship I’d still be trapped in thirty years later.'
Joseph Staines left town with a stolen tallybook, but two suspicious deaths and a surprise inheritance have lured him back home to Edinburgh. No-one is pleased to see him. The debtors want him gone. The Police have some questions for him. And a mysterious stranger has been asking about him in the pub. To survive, Staines has to sober up, solve the murders, and stay one step ahead of the man who wants him dead.