The Endings Man

‘Why is it,’ Barclay Curle grumbles to his agent Jonah, ‘that all the regional Edinburgh detectives have monosyllabic first names like Jack and Bob?’ Then Curle publishes his newest book – about an Edinburgh detective called Doug – and incites a letter from anonymous admirer accusing him of stealing the murders she has committed. Fiction and fact get even harder to tell apart when a woman found dead in a Newtown flat is found to have been killed by the method favoured by the serial killer in Curle’s novel. For Detective Inspector Meldrum – first name Jim – Curle seems the obvious suspect. To add to his difficulties, his wife is about to discover he has had a mistress for the last eight years. And the bully who made his life a misery as a boy reappears, apparently determined for some mysterious reason to take off where he set off. Faced with a second murder and a darkening cloud of suspicion, Curle decides the time has come to take action. After all, he asks himself, who has more experience of solving murder mysteries than a crime novelist?

Reviews of The Endings Man

'One of the most potent voices in contemporary Scottish fiction' The Herald 'Lindsay is a profoundly serious writer using the conventions of the mystery novel to approach "the dangerous edge of things" ' Allan Massie, The Scotsman