2022 Authors | Bute Noir

Alex North

Alex North had a huge and wholly deserved hit with his terrifying first release The Whisper Man. A Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller. This runaway international hit, being published in more than thirty languages, rocketed him to the forefront of the spinechilling end of the crime genre. He followed it up with the equally unsettling thriller The Shadow Friend in which a copycat killer brings home the small-town horrors of a terrible day 25 years earlier and desperate efforts to stop it happening again.

Saturday 6th August
Trinity Church
12pm – 1pm
“Burning Issues”
CJ Tudor, Stuart Neville & Alex North

Mark Edwards

Mark Edwards is the multi-million selling author of psychological thrillers about ordinary people trapped in terrifying circumstances. His terrific number one bestsellers include The Magpies, The Hollows, and The House Guest. Always suspenseful, always surprising, his books have earned an army of fans. His latest, No Place to Run, is set in Northern California. Fifteen-year-old Scarlett has been missing for two years and when a woman sees a teenage girl running for her life across a forest clearing, she’s convinced it’s her.

Sunday 7th August
Isle of Bute Discovery Theatre
11am – 12 noon
“All American”
Mark Edwards, Alex Knight and Tariq Ashkanani

Ambrose Parry

Ambrose Parry is a pseudonym for husband-and- wife team Chris Brookmyre and Marisa Haetzman.

Chris is the international bestselling author of over 20 novels and Marisa is a consultant anaesthetist of 20 years’ experience. Her research for her master’s degree in the History of Medicine uncovered the material upon which their novels are based, and she is the brains of the outfit. Set in the medical world of Edinburgh in the 1840’s, The Way of All Flesh, The Art of Dying and A Corruption of Blood have been hailed as Gothic masterpieces.

Saturday 6th August
Trinity Church
10.30am – 11.30am
“Historical Crime”
Ambrose Parry & Johana Gustawsson

Alexandra Sokoloff

Alexandra Sokoloff worked for ten years as a Hollywood screenwriter. The New York Times called her “a daughter of Mary Shelley” and her books “some of the most original and freshly unnerving work in the genre”. Her award-winning Huntress Moon series follows an FBI agent on the hunt for a female serial killer, smashing genre clichés and combating the rise of violence against women on the page and screen. Alex splits her time between L.A and Scotland with her husband and fellow crime writer Craig Robertson.

Sunday 7th August
Isle of Bute Discovery Theatre
12.30pm – 1.30pm
“Screen Test”
Michael Bennett, Helen FitzGerald and Alexandra Sokoloff

Tariq Ashkanani

Tariq Ashkanani is a solicitor based in Edinburgh and a dynamic new addition to Scotland’s crime writing roster. His assured US-set debut Welcome to Cooper is an explosive thriller about bad choices and dark crimes in smalltown Nebraska. He has returned to the backwater of Cooper with the exhilarating Follow Me to the Edge which begins in powerful style with the multiple murder of an entire family, brutally bludgeoned to death in their beds, and a detective facing up to ghosts from his past.

Sunday 7th August
Isle of Bute Discovery Theatre
11am – 12 noon
“All American”
Mark Edwards, Alex Knight and Tariq Ashkanani

Johana Gustawsson

Johana Gustawsson is a French author, born and raised in Marseilles, who spent many years in London but is now living in Sweden with her husband and children. She leapt to the reading public’s attention with her harrowing debut Block 46 set among the horrors of Buchenwald concentration camp. Her compelling new novel, The Bleeding, is set across three generations in her native France, beginning in La Belle Époque of 1899 Paris and leading to a brutal murder in 21^st Century Quebec.

Saturday 6th August
Trinity Church
10.30am – 11.30am
“Historical Crime”
Ambrose Parry & Johana Gustawsson

Doug Johnstone

Doug Johnstone is the author of the critically acclaimed Skelf series of crime novels set in Edinburgh. A Dark Matter, The Big Chill and The Great Silence tell of three generations of women, a family of funeral directors and private investigators. Doug has written 13 novels, including bestselling standalones such as Gone Again, Hit & Run, and The Jump, which was shortlisted for the McIlvanney Prize for Best Scottish Crime Novel of the Year. Doug is the drummer for the Fun Lovin’ Crime Writers, co-founder of the Scotland Writers Football Club, and has a PhD in nuclear physics.

Saturday 6th August
Trinity Church Hall
1.30pm – 2.30m

Chris Brookmyre & Doug Johnstone

CJ Tudor

CJ Tudor made an astonishing start to her writing career with the wonderfully creepy and award-winning novel The Chalk Man, which garnered praise high praise from none other than Stephen King. The book is being made into a six-part BBC series. She’s gone from strength to strength since then and her sixth novel is the darkly suspenseful The Burning Girls. A village haunted by the legend of eight martyrs burned to death, and the secrets and suspicions of the present day.

Saturday 6th August
Trinity Church
12 noon – 1pm
“Burning Issues”
CJ Tudor, Alex North & Stuart Neville