The Small Picture Podcasts

It′s Summer in the Granite City, but even the sunshine can′t improve the mood at Grampian Police Headquarters.

Aberdeen′s growing Polish community is under attack from a serial offender who leaves mutilated victims to be discovered on building sites - eyes gouged out and the sockets burned.

Detective Sergeant Logan McRae is assigned to the investigation, codenamed Operation Oedipus, but with the victims too scared to talk, it′s going nowhere fast.

When the next victim turns out to be not a newly arrived eastern european, but Simon McLeod, owner of the Turf n′ Track bookies, Logan suddenly finds himself caught up in a world of drug wars, prostitution rings and gun-running courtesy of Aberdeen′s oldest and most vicious crime lord.

Stuart MacBride has gone from asking people if they ′want fries with that′ to project-managing vast IT projects for the oil industry. Somewhere in the middle he managed to make money out of dressing up as a woman.

His first book, ‘Cold Granite’ was shortlisted for the International Thriller Writers′ best debut novel and won the Barry Award for best first novel. The follow-up, ‘Dying Light’, became an instant top-ten bestseller. Stuart won the 2007 CWA Dagger in the Library, awarded for a body of work.

Stuart lives in north-east Scotland with his wife Fiona, cat Grendel, and a vegetable plot full of weeds.

This is easily one of the best interviews I've done in an awfully long time. Stuart's a wonderful guy, easy to talk to, as well as being clever, quick witted and often just down right funny.

The interview ranges from things to do with offal, poking people in the eye, cookery, sushi, finding a good butcher, and why Scotland's just such a great place to produce murder mysteries in...