Inspector Logan McRae stars in the twelfth book of this gritty police procedural series, set in the granite-walled police station of Aberdeen on the east coast of Scotland. This is a bleak, bitter, snowy city in winter; however, ALL THAT’S DEAD occurs during a swelteringly hot summer.

Professor Wilson lived in a small homesteading outside the city, with no neighbours, no company apart from an elderly Jack Russell terrier. Someone has broken in, and the professor has vanished, leaving behind an awful lot of blood and a meticulously wiped crime scene. One of his faculty colleagues discovers the distressing situation, and the police arrive to inspect a probable murder scene. Logan arrives for a different reason; after a year off recovering from injuries, he is assigned to the internal investigations team. Detective Inspector King, in charge of the crew, has something in his past which warrants the attention of Professional Standards; now that the local media have got hold of it, anyway.

This tale mixes the hilarious with the dreadful, the twitter account with Robert Burns poetry. A constitutional scholar with views on Scots independence, Professor Wilson attracted threats from extremists and politicians, from people who hate Brexit and hate anyone English. Tracking down anonymous tweets from someone who knows too much about his disappearance, requires a young computer whiz constable known as Tufty to meet the IT forensic investigations unit – a man in a cardigan – and he moves straight on to borrow some high-powered server time from a technical film making company. The female officers have a robust nature and don’t hesitate to make comments if the men get something wrong.

Just to let newcomers know, Logan McRae is an adult crime series all right; Hamish McBeth it’s not. While many strange local words appear, I suspect they’re not just for local colour but to avoid making the language any stronger than it needs to be. I read the book from start to finish in one go, and can safely say that ALL THAT’S DEAD is the most entertaining Sunday read I’ve had all year. And I can confirm that Logan is right; battered haddock and chips should be Scotland’s national dish, and they serve it best in Aberdeen.