A killer is terrorizing a Scottish college town—and a police detective fears that his ex-wife may be in the crosshairs . . .
When a university lecturer is stalked by one of her own students, DI Jim Carruthers is horrified to discover that the academic is none other than his ex-wife, Mairi. It’s especially alarming since another student has just been brutally attacked and left for dead—and the stalker and killer may be one and the same.
Putting his personal feelings for newly appointed DCI Sandra McTavish aside for the moment, Carruthers focuses on leading his team on the hunt after two more victims are found, with the crimes only growing more gruesome. What is the victims’ connection to a cult in North America, which seems to be getting a stranglehold in a Scottish university? Why have these women been targeted? And who is doing the killing? As fear spreads through Castletown, Carruthers must race to stop this depraved murderer . . .
Tana Collins is a Yorkshire born crime writer who was brought up in rural East Sussex. She did a Social Science Degree at the Polytechnic of North London in the mid 80s where she wrote her final year dissertation on the right to free speech before studying for an MA in Philosophy at the University of Western Ontario and an MPhil at St Andrews. It was Peter Robinson’s DCI Banks series that got her obsessively reading crime fiction and seeing an exhibition on the life of Ian Fleming that strangely motivated her to start writing all things crime. A few days later she woke up in the middle of the night with a title, within a couple of hours she had an opening scene, by breakfast a setting and by lunch time a lead detective. ‘Robbing The Dead’ was born and ten arduous years later finally completed. ‘Care to Die’ was written as the follow up and ‘Mark of the Devil’ as the third in the Inspector Carruthers series. For the last 20 years Tana has been living in Scotland working as a Massage Therapist and more recently as a Stress Management Consultant. Her novels are all set in the East Neuk of Fife which is an area of Scotland close to her heart.