Lin Anderson starts a new detective series with her latest book, The High Island, which sees DI Erling Flett take centre stage. We chatted with Lin about some of her favourite books.

The High Island
By Lin Anderson
Published by Pan Macmillan

The book as . . . memory. What is your first memory of books and reading? 

It was the Janet and John learning to read books in Primary School, after which I joined the library and read everything by Enid Blyton. Learning to read was like entering another world and was a dream come true.   

The book as . . . your work. Tell us about your latest novel The High Island. Why have you decided to start on a new series? 

I used to live and work in Orkney and still visit regularly. That’s why I took Dr Rhona MacLeod there on a number of occasions. DI Erling Flett has been in four of the Rhona series. Paths of the Dead, None but the Dead (set on Sanday), The Killing Tide and the most recent The Dead and the Dying. I always wanted to give him his own series and now I have, beginning with The High Island, the local name for Hoy. Here is the blurb:

Erling left Orkney as a teenager, vowing never to return, only to find himself drawn back, and as a police officer, something he could never have imagined in his youth. 

Where everyone knows your name, every case is personal. 

On the rugged island of Hoy, a wealthy couple’s dream of building an eco-home becomes a waking nightmare when the peat yields a grisly secret: the remains of a young mother and her baby. 

For DI Flett the discovery is a personal haunting. As he fights to identify the nameless dead, the community pushes back – and his own troubled history begins to surface. 

At the heart of the mystery lies a family feud over blood-soaked soil. Can Flett finally face the ghosts of his past? Or will the island claim its next victim before the truth is told? 

The book as . . . inspiration. What is your favourite book that has informed how you see yourself? 

I was an avid Agatha Christie fan, but it was Willie McIlvanney’s book Laidlaw, that taught me that it was possible to write a crime novel, both set in a place I knew well and using a language that was mine. 

The book as . . . an object. What is your favourite beautiful book? 

George MacKay Brown’s book, An Orkney Tapestry. Beautiful in all ways. I was given it as a going away present from my fellow teachers in Glasgow, when I moved to Orkney. I had never read any of his work until then. I fell in love with his writing as I fell in love with the place and people he wrote about. 

The book as . . . a gateway. What book introduced you to a new passion? 

The Fellowship of the Ring which I read as a teenager when at Glasgow university. It became a touchstone on wonderful, imaginative storytelling. My boyfriend, then husband was a big fan too. Our three children fell in love with it too. It has created many memories for us as a family. 

The book as . . . a relationship. What is your favourite book that bonded you to someone else?  

My first novel Driftnet was published shortly after Alex Gray’s first book Never Somewhere Else came out. We were introduced to each other in the crime section of Waterstones Sauchiehall Street by a bookseller, who said he knew we would become firm friends. We did and some years later founded Bloody Scotland together. 

The book as . . . rebellion. What is your favourite book that felt like it revealed a secret truth to you? 

I always return to To Kill a Mocking Bird. The power of children to challenge, to question, to care, and to love, is something we adults need to be reminded off, over and over again.  

The book as . . . a destination. What is your favourite book set in a place unknown to you? 

Issac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy was another favourite at university. I studied mathematics and computing science at Glasgow, and the idea that we could map out our future using psychohistory to create a better universe, than the one currently in collapse, was an intriguing one.   

The book as . . . the future. What are you looking forward to reading next? 

 I am looking forward to reading the books currently shortlisted for the 2026 Bloody Scotland debut prize: 

• Frances Crawford with A Bad, Bad Place. She’s an alumni of the University of Glasgow creative writing course, was was tutored by bestselling crime writer, Louise Welsh. Her novel is described as The List of Suspicious Things meets Shuggie Bain. It has also just been shortlisted for the Theakston’s McDermid Debut Prize.  
• Linda Duncan McLaughlin with Original Sins. The manuscript for this novel was nominated for the CWA’s Debut Dagger. It’s about a troubled young woman who discovers that her birth father is a convicted serial killer and confronts the possibility that she has inherited his darkness.
• Kirsty Lockwood with We Know What You Did. It’s described as Strange Sally Diamond meets Listen for the Lie, it is a character-driven suspense novel from an award-winning Scottish journalist.   
• Zoe Rankin with The Vanishing Place. She grew up in Scotland but now lives in New Zealand where her love of hiking in remote locations inspired the idea for her novel about a young girl who has witnessed a double murder deep in the bush.  
• May Rinaldi with Liar Thief. She has previously been selected for Pitch Perfect and won the 2023 Black Spring Press Crime Novel which led to their publishing it! It’s a psychological thriller about two childhood friends, one a self-confessed serial killer, one a cop.

The High Island by Lin Anderson is published by Pan Macmillan, priced £20.