This month I dove deep into a darker mystery that I found thoroughly compelling. Not only did it catch my eye, it’s a revisit to one of the author’s earlier series in a macabre story that offers something unique—a hero who isn’t the hero of the story. LOL, only the author can explain that statement, and I have to say I found bestselling author Stuart MacBride highly entertaining on and off the page.
Kym: Welcome to The Cozy Corner on Fresh Fiction, Stuart!
Stuart: Pleased to be here, with a nice cup of tea and a reasonably priced biscuit. And I love what you’ve done with the place, very … booky. Which is always good.
Kym: LOL, I’m glad I could create the perfect ‘booky’ corner for you. A couple times a year I get lured away from cozy mysteries on The Cozy Corner and into the darker side of mysteries, add in a little bit dark humor and I’m all in. That’s exactly what you brought to my library with THIS HOUSE OF BURNING BONES, a Detective Inspector Logan McRae mystery. How did the series get started 20 years ago?
Stuart: I’d always been a big fan of crime fiction, ever since I was a little boy reading the Hardy Boys books from the school library, so when I started writing it made sense to write the kind of book I loved to read. And, at the time, there was very little fiction set in the northeast of Scotland, so I thought it would be cool to use my hometown as a backdrop.
Everyone else had weirdo main characters – think Sherlock Holmes with his violin and implacable logic, or Morse with his crosswords, real ale, and classic car – and those weirdos always had a normal, everyday sidekick to drag around with them, so the author could show off how clever their hero was. My idea was to flip that on its head, so Logan McRae is a normal, every guy, who works for the kind of weirdos who would normally be the hero of the story.
Kym: Other than burning down a hostel, having a newspaper mogul go missing and torturing DI Logan McRae once again, how did you celebrate the 20th Anniversary of your DI Logan McRae mystery series?
Stuart: My wife, Fiona, and I had our traditional publishing celebratory meal of steak, prawns, and a bottle of something fizzy. Because we’re wild and hedonistic that way. I also sent my first editor, Jane, her assistant (who later became my editor) Sarah, and my agent, Phil, a bottle of champagne (one each, they didn’t have to share) so they could pop a cork and celebrate with their loved ones.
Before this, the longest I’d ever stayed in a job was four years, so hanging-in at something for twenty was kind of a big deal for me…
Kym: Wow, now that’s a lesson on how to show proper gratitude to those who make great books possible! You said in an interview on the Chris Voss Podcast that your characters hate you and would never want to sit down and drink a pint with you because you torture them so much. That said, which one of your characters would enjoy plotting revenge against you, and would s/he actually carry it out?
Stuart: The only one who’d probably go through with it is Ash Henderson, from my OLDCASTLE novels. He’s very … morally flexible when it comes to what he is and isn’t prepared to do when he wants to achieve the “right” outcome. And it wouldn’t be the first time he’s had to get rid of a body.
Kym: Ha! You said that your obsession with reading started with Winnie the Pooh, yet your children’s book, Skeleton Bob, is about as far from the loveable Pooh as it gets. (Not that any of your readers are complaining) Did you find it difficult to make Skeleton Bob macabre and whimsical at the same time? (Sadly, the book is not available in the United States)
Stuart: I love a bit of whimsy (which you can probably tell from the dialogue in my novels). Skeleton Bob started out as an idea to make a little children’s book for my nephew, who was three at the time. So, I wrote a little rhyming story and drew some nice pictures to go along with it and thought no more about it, until years later when I was asked to help raise money for a new teaching mortuary at Dundee University. As a result of which, I now have a dissecting room named after me. It’s an odd claim to fame, but I’ll take it.
Kids love the macabre, but grownups always want to sanitize everything for them. They’re gruesome (and often sticky) little monsters, and sometimes it’s nice to lean into that.
Kym: I think a dissecting room named after you is a about the best honor a mystery author could receive! It’s freaking awesome, really. Since you named Logan’s cat Cthulhu in the DETECTIVE INSPECTOR LOGAN MCRAE series, I have to ask if you’re a fan of H.P. Lovecraft’s THE CALL OF THE CTHULHU from 1923 or if there’s a cat in your personal life you wish you’d named Cthulhu?
Stuart: I read all of Lovecraft’s work back when I was eleven, or twelve – long before I found out about his repugnant views, racism, and xenophobia – and I used to play the role-playing game based in his world with friends. So that whole eldritch horror thing is a solid lump in the core of my dark and unspeakable heart (along with a good dollop of Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and James Herbert). And while I’ve never had a cat called Cthulhu, giving Logan a kitten was really just an excuse to write about my special little girl, Grendel. Who I dedicated several books to (because she was the best cat in the world).
Right now, we have Gherkin, Onion, and Beetroot, but I may well return to the monster theme at some point.
Kym: I love how you name your cats! No Kittys in the cottage;) Since I’m a retired detective sergeant with a potty mouth and I’ve been known to have wild hair, (Roseanne Roseannadanna has nothing on me when it rains, or when I visit Scotland) I’m really hoping there’s a local copper who’s getting a kick out of being molded into your secondary character, Roberta Steel. Is Detective Inspector Roberta Steel the real deal? If not, you can lie and say I inspired Roberta two or three decades ago;)
Stuart: I’m happy to say that you definitely inspired Roberta Steel, 22 years ago when I started writing Cold Granite.
She’s not in the least bit based on a real person, I’m afraid – I made her up. She must’ve been lurking somewhere in my subconscious though, as she plopped onto the page pretty much fully formed, without any planning whatsoever. At the time it was just a throwaway line between Logan and the desk sergeant at force headquarters, gossiping about how DI Steel had an affair with some other officer’s wife. And at that point, I had no idea who DI Steel was. But the next line made it clear that DI Steel was a woman, and there she was in all her rumple-haired, wrinkly, chain-smoking glory.
But even though she’s fictional, I’ve received emails from police officers all over the globe, saying they know exactly who I based her on, because they work with her…
Which is actually kind of worrying.
Kym: Ha! I knew my career would inspire someone;) If you had to kill one of your characters, who would you kill and why? (Please don’t kill Roberta, we’ve got a thing going on.)
Stuart: I do sometimes contemplate killing people off, but my editors are never very keen. For me, it all depends on the story and if killing them would make that story better, and would it give the reader a proper BANG. No point doing it otherwise. And as it’s completely story dependent, the “who” and the “why” will have to wait until I know what I’m writing about. Which doesn’t help much as an answer, but I’m sticking with it.
Kym: It’s a trade secret, dear readers. Sorry, I tried! I always ask our guests if they have a favorite cozy corner where they like to curl up and read. (I know, most men sprawl instead of curling up to read) Where’s your favorite cozy place?
Stuart: I am a recumbent reader, so I do all my reading either on the big saggy couch, or upstairs on the bed. The key, for me, is to have what we call in our house “THE BIFFER”. It’s a small bolster pillow that I put on my chest and then the book goes on top of that. So, A: I don’t have to hold the book up, and B: it’s far enough away to be in focus without my glasses on. And it’s called THE BIFFER because you can use it to biff people if they’re naughty.
(please biff responsibly, and always ask the biffee’s permission before biffing them)
Kym: LOL, you realize you need to market a Roberta ‘Biffer’ because she will biff everyone, to hell with the rules. Do you plan on writing another DI McRae mystery, or will you be taking another hiatus from the series?
Stuart: I’ll be back with Logan for a dark serial killer thriller, when I’ve finished writing the book that I’m working on now. I’m not going to say anything about what I’ll be subjecting Logan to just yet though, because it’s a secret (and I might change my mind). But it should be out in 2027.
Kym: What are you working on now?”
Stuart: Right now, I’m writing a DI Steel novel – as yet untitled – that picks up where THIS HOUSE OF BURNING BONES ends, and deals with what happens when Roberta Steel finally retires. Back when she joined the police, you did thirty years, and then that was it: out to pasture you go. So it’s compulsory, rather than voluntary, and she’s not keen to go.
After which things go very, very wrong.
Well, it is crime fiction, after all.
Kym: Do you have any signings scheduled this year?
Stuart: None at all. Not even one. I’m spending all my time at home with my wife and cats, doing battle with THE DREADED DEADLINES OF DOOM! I’ve got a short novel coming out later in the year (my take on a Golden-Age-style mystery, featuring partial nudity, bloodshed, and creative taxidermy), so its deadlines all the way down.
Kym: Now that’s some taxidermy that has my interest! Since you’ve banned social media from your life for cause, where can our readers find you on the web?
Stuart: There’s my official website, an official Facebook page, and I occasionally ramble on Substack: StuartMacBride.substack.com - but that’s not run by my publisher, so it’s not official-official. And I also do it very infrequently. Mostly because I don’t want it to just be me ranting about how messed-up the world is (because it really is), and right now it can be challenging to keep a decent flow of whimsy going in the face of all this hate, violence, and toe-curling ignorance.
Kym: Ahh, how right you are. Luckily, we have your books to escape to. Thank you for joining us on the Cozy Corner! It was a true pleasure getting to know Logan McRae and the gang.
Stuart: Thank you for having me. And thanks for the reasonably priced biscuits!
Logan McRae #13
The Brand New Logan McRae Thriller From Sunday Times Bestselling Author Stuart MacBride
The Granite City is ready to burn, and all it takes is a single spark…
In the heat of a blistering summer, Aberdeen’s police are struggling: half the force is off sick, all leave has been cancelled, someone’s firebombed a hotel full of migrants, and there’s a massive protest march happening this Saturday.
With officers dropping like flies, Detective Inspector Logan McRae is forced to juggle cases and run a major murder investigation with a skeleton staff of misfits, idiots and malingerers until the top brass can arrange back-up from other divisions.
It doesn’t help that the Aberdeen Examiner has just been bought by Natasha Agapova, a tabloid media tycoon, hell-bent on blaming local police for everything. And she’s more than happy to fan the flames.
But, as bad as everything seems, it’s all about to get much, much worse . . .
Thriller Crime [Macmillan UK, On Sale: July 22, 2025, Hardcover / e-Book, ISBN: 9781035064854 / eISBN: 9781035064885]
All about Stuart and his beard... Stuart MacBride was born in Dumbarton, but ran away to join the circus at the age of nine, where he specialised in wrestling bears for money (Going on to represent Great Britain at the Atlanta Olympics). In 1975 he won the Nobel Peace Prize for his revolutionary work on Irn-Bru, then went on to create the world's biggest ball of bellybutton lint. In 1989 he joined the secret intelligence service, but was later invalided out due to a back injury sustained while performing a reverse-overhead-piledriver on a grizzly bear. Now confined to his pyjamas, Stuart fritters away his time writing crime novels set in Aberdeen and lying to journalists.
Kym Roberts writes by day and is a pro-surfer in her dreams by night. Her humor is often raunchy, her jokes are often bad, but her hunger for a story keeps the adventures coming fast. Experience the thrill & catch the wave of passion, mystery, and suspense with her on her website, on Facebook, and on Twitter.
Her debut historical romance novel in The Scandalous Sisters series, The Ruined Duchess released in April under the pseudonym Helene Matheson. Watch for her second book in the series, The Rebellious Countess, released in August 2025.
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