DARK STAR

Dark times produce dark fiction, so if any book is perfectly matched to the period it’s written in, it’s the fiendishly brilliant new novel by Scottish crime star Stuart MacBride. No Less the Devil is a hellish excursion into the realms of privilege where ‘reality’ and ‘truth’ are slippery, shape-shifting concepts.

Fittingly for the author of a book that so effectively scrambles its readers’ brains, Stuart has a reputation for playing with the truth in interviews with journalists, and WM wonders if he’s going to be tricksy to talk to. ‘Who told you that?’ he asks, amiably. It turns out that as well as being our star interview, he’s an absolute star, telling stories about the cats he and his wife Fiona have rescued, giving credence to the reputation that crime writers, who get all the darkness out in their fiction, have of being some of the friendliest and most engaging figures in the author community.

Still, there’s no hiding from the fact that No Less the Devil is a serial killer novel that explores the farthest reaches of dark, murky territory.

‘It all grew out of a short story I wrote several years ago,’ says Stuart. ‘I submitted the story and they went, it’s too dark, we can’t broadcast this.’

The story was about ’s lead character, Stuart’s DS Lucy McVeigh – a new detective for his first book for a new publisher, Transworld. At the beginning of she’s investigating a serial killer known as The Bloodsmith, at the same time as responding to calls for help from a child murderer who has recently been released