Colin MacIntyre & Ambrose Parry

It is our great pleasure to be welcoming bestselling authors, Colin MacIntyre, Chris Brookmyre and Dr Marisa Haetzman to the shop on Wednesday 5th June at 7pm for an evening of M**der and mystery as they discuss their latest books, When the Needle Drops and Voices of the Dead.

Join the multi-award-winning musician, producer, author and playwright, Colin MacIntyre as he talks about the thrilling first book in The Mull Mysteries Series, , AND, bestselling authors Chris Brookmyre and Dr Marisa Haetzman who write the rip-roaring tales of M**der amid the medical experiments of 19th-century Edinburgh under the penname, Ambrose Parry, for the paperback publication of their latest book, .

Be sure to book your tickets today!

When the Needle Drops

It is 1998 and three days before Christmas on the Scottish Isle of Mull, and troubled 45-year-old loner Sergeant Ivor Punch – haunted by the death of his brother in the Lockerbie Disaster exactly 10 years previously – receives a frantic call from a woman named Maggie May to report a missing plane and pilot. The missing pilot is Xander Lowry, a respected Classical musician whose body is subsequently found propped on a hillside, but with no plane in sight.

As the renegade Sergeant Punch attemps to navigate the new and unwelcome dynamic brought by his bureaucratic and overly keen, fresh-faced deputy PC Cluny, brought in the from head office, a little girl, Iris, goes missing, and soon another body is found.

As effigies start appearing around the small island, the inhabitants are gripped in a sinister plot which will lead Ivor Punch all the way back to that first phone call from the elusive Maggie May if he is to make sense of the dark mayhem engulfing the island.

Voices of the Dead is set in 1853, a time of unprecedented scientific innovation. The public’s appetite for wonder has seen a resurgence of interest in mesmerism, spiritualism and other unexplained phenomena. Dr Will Raven is wary of the shadowlands that lie between progress and quackery, but aspiring medic, Sarah Fisher, can’t afford to be so picky. Frustrated in her medical ambitions, she sees opportunity in a new therapeutic field which isn’t yet closed off to women.

Raven has enough on his hands as it is. Body parts have been found at Surgeons’ Hall, and they’re not anatomy specimens. In a city still haunted by the crimes of Burke and Hare, he is tasked with heading off a scandal. When further human remains are found, Raven is able to identify a prime suspect but the man he seeks is an accomplished actor and a renowned master of disguise:

‘a logical, scientific man such as yourself is easily manipulable by a practised deceiver. It is the magician’s job to make you not only concentrate on the wrong thing at the crucial time, but to look in the wrong place for the explanation. You must change the way you think about the mystery you are trying to solve. Make no assumptions, and never look at it from the same angle twice.’

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Doors: 6.30pm, event starts: 7pm, please arrive early to secure a good seat.

Tickets are £3.00 and there is a Ticket & Book option which includes a signed copies of When the Needle Drops or Voices of the Dead.

The bookshop has level access, events are seated and speakers use microphones. If you have any concerns about accessibility, please do get in touch and we will do our best to accommodate your needs.

For more information or if you would like a signed copy because you can't make it to the event, please contact the Blackwell's events team on 0131 622 8222 or [email protected]

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Blackwell's Bookshop, 53-62 South Bridge, Edinburgh, United Kingdom