Region provides backdrop for crime novel

CRIME novelist Lynne McEwan is gearing up for the release of her latest novel next month. ‘The Winter Dead’ is the sixth book in Lynne’s DI Shona Oliver series, which is set in Dumfries and Galloway. The area is one Lynne knows well as growing up in Glasgow her family enjoyed many holidays in the region and she has been visiting ever since. Her latest work is set around a fictionalised version of Dalbeattie Forest, as Shona, her neighbours and her fellow lifeboat volunteers preparing for a storm to come in and Shona finds a bloodied hammer in a delivery of firewood, and the blood is human, she has a murder weapon but no victim.

Meanwhile there’s also been reports of people illegally felling whole trees from the forest for winter fuel, and when Shona starts to look into this she finds a forest ranger is missing. Lynne’s inspiration for The Winter Dead came from two visits to the region following storms Arwen in 2021 and Éowyn earlier this year, she said: “I was really blown away by the level of damage that had happened. It was like a giant had swept their arm across the area with all the trees down, and that kind of image stayed in my mind. “So in this book I wanted to explore the impact of increasingly severe weather, and how you would go about investigating a murder in the middle of all that.” Choosing to set her books in the region was a straightforward one, with potential to bring in other areas of the UK she continued: “One of the most important things for me as an author is the landscape, it plays a big role in the books, it’s almost a character in itself. “When I started looking for a place to put a Scottish detective, the great appeal of Dumfries and Galloway is the fact that it’s close to the English border, the Isle of Man and Northern Ireland. I was really interested in exploring how the Scottish law system butts up against the other systems because they are all different. “Crime fiction is all about borders in a way, the border between good and evil, right and wrong so I thought that the region really lends itself well.” With the release of The Winter Dead scheduled for November 6 Lynne is excited for her readers and supporters within the region to read the latest instalment and expressed her gratitude adding: “I really appreciate the support that I have from local readers, bookshops and the lifeboat crews in the area as well. It makes it a real pleasure to visit Dumfries and Galloway and set the books there because people have been so supportive.”