Constable Edward Reekie has been seconded to accompany a senior officer on a prisoner transfer. However the transfer is to an isolated village in the heart of the Highlands, a penal colony for those who cannot be released into the public domain - the sex offenders, gangsters etc. As the weather closes in Reekie and his boss are trapped in the village and now someone is killing the residents.
This is a stand alone novel from Macbride and it contains all of his signature humour, violence and clever storytelling. The idea of the village of Glenfarach is brilliant and the twisty nature of the plot - who can Reekie trust - works with the classic 'closed room' scenario. It's as far away from cosy crime as you can get but is brilliant! ( )

This is one creepy story. In fact all of Stuart MacBride’s stories are creepy. Even the titles are creepy. Creepy and so compelling that you can’t put them down. You have to know the next horrible thing one horrible character is going to do to an equally horrible character. The well written plot always goes smoothly on and on and on, pushing you, pulling you, dragging you, rolling right over you.

Not many authors can set a scene and transport you to it, envelop you in it, like he does. I swear I was cold and scared the entire time I was reading The Dead of Winter. MacBride has a way with words like no other author. Not traditional happy, funny, warm, wise uplifting words, but they sure do stick with you. They make you shudder and squirm and laugh in spite of yourself. Who can stop from letting loose a little snicker at this, “. . . throw in a voice so slithery it'd give porridge the creeps” or this, “The cat stopped licking its kneepits to stare at Edward, then returned to the task in . . . tongue.”

It was supposed to be a simple pick-up and delivery by Detective Constable Edward Reekie and his new boss Bigtoria – oops, sorry, DI Victoria Montgomery-Porter. Drop off an old dying prisoner to somewhere criminals go to live out the rest of their lives out of harm’s way and out of a way for them to harm again. Then get back to town before the blizzard hits. Good plan, but . . . .

We learn right off the bat in the “0” chapter what happens to Edward, but you’re not even halfway through the second chapter before you start to suspect you might not much care what happened or be very sad to see him go. He is an annoying little know-it-all who has no doubt he’s smart, funny, and has to get in the last word. Even death doesn’t seem to have shut him up. It’s a constant stream of comments, complaints, whining, pronouncements about Bigtoria’s attitude, behavior and incompetence, the food, the weather, the cold, the snow, and if only they would just have listened to him. The more time we spend with him the more we agree 100% when he says, “I never really wanted to be a police officer.”

It's noted in the book that a parade of never-ending grubbiness and passing the buck is a metaphor for modern Police Scotland. I don’t know about that, but the time spent in Glenfarach is never-ending cold, snow, torture, murder, danger, isolation, fear and uncertainty and passing the blame. Of course Edward knows who to trust and who to suspect, who’s guilty and who is innocent. But does he?

Don’t even think you can figure out what will happen next or that you can stay a step ahead of masterful author MacBride, because you can’t. Just let yourself be grossed out and creeped out and scared out of your wits in the gloomy, frozen, snowy dead of winter. Thanks to Random House UK for providing an advance copy of The Dead of Winter via NetGalley for my creepy reading pleasure. I loved it, can’t recommend it enough, and am voluntarily leaving this review. All opinions are my own. ( )

“A claw-foot bath dominated one wall, topped by a mildewed shower-curtain. Crusts of dark-orange and brown limescale around the drain. Lid and seat up on the toilet, showing off a whole Formula-One- season of skid marks.” There you have it, the writing style of Stuart MacBride enriched with toilet humour, rude rather than crude remarks, a list of very colourful and dur Scottish characters hidden loosely under crime/noir. Now let me say from the start I have been reading this authors books from the early days of Cold Granite, the first Logan McCrea novel and have always found his style refreshing and indeed at times highly amusing (who could forget DCI Roberta Steel and her testing sense of humour most of it at the expense of Logan who she rather fondly called Laz :)

In “The dead of Winter '' two officers DC Reekie and his boss DI Victoria (Bigtoria) Montgomery-Porter are delivering a dying prisoner Mark Bishop to the remote Scottish village of Glenfarach to live his remaining short years in a more open environment. There are 200 other offenders incarcerated here, having committed many crimes of a sexual nature, murder, and embezzlement. The weather is closing in and the officers wish to return asap to Aberdeen before threatened blizzards make an appearance. Unfortunately this will not happen as a murder in the style of an execution has occurred and with 200 (now 199!) suspects Reekie and Porter will need to be resolute and strong before the perpetrator strikes again. There is very little hope of any outside help arriving as Glenfarach quickly becomes snowbound. I am afraid what I once found exciting and new in the author’s writing I now find laborious and tedious. What once was crisp and humorous has now become lewd and tired. The crime and noir has been replaced by a slapdash style as our 2 headless chickens investigate in a way reminiscent of the Marx Bros. Thank you to the good people at netgalley for a gratis copy in return for an honest review and that is what I have written. ( )