The Girl in the Loch by Andrew James Greig is a delicious, compelling, and harrowing tale of secrets, lies, and the presence of the past. Like the loch around which this story revolves, The Girl in the Loch is deep, inscrutable, a seemingly calm surface roiled with eddies and dangerous undercurrents.

The Girl in the Loch, by Andrew James Greig
ISBN 978-1805084785 – 346 pages – Pub. date 26-January-2024

Three years after the disappearance of a three-year-old girl from her isolated Highland home, her grief-stricken parents hire Private Investigator Teàrlach Paterson – an expert in finding missing children – to bring their precious Lily home. Paterson’s investigation will bring together–and clash with–secrets, superstition and folklore. The loch and its environs seethe with a chilly evil, born of the mists, of folklore and superstition, but reflecting very real, present day sins, lies and corruption. Add to this mixture Travellers, Lotharios, and that the grieving father is a vindictive gangster, and the reader is desperate to know what’s going to happen next.

I have also read Grieg’s very fine novel, Whirligig, a lyrical, macabre mystery set in the Highlands, so I came to Girl in the Loch with great expectation. It doesn’t disappoint! The surprising twists and revelations turn on small community kinship, crimes, and superstition. The stakes are high for everyone involved in this tale. Like the loch itself, what lies beneath will be revealed only at great cost, or by some measure of violence.

Greig’s characters are clearly drawn, believable, and sympathetic (even the awful ones). The prose is confident and rewarding, evocative and lyrical. His use of local folklore and superstition lends an intriguing ghost-story stillness, as well as a deeper invocation of the wages of sin, of forces greater than ourselves.

Highly recommended!

I received an advance copy of the title from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

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James McCrone is the author of the Imogen Trager political suspense-thrillers Faithless Elector, Dark Network , and Emergency Powers–noir tales about a stolen presidency, a conspiracy, and a nation on edge. Bastard Verdict, his fourth novel, is about a conspiracy surrounding a second Scottish Independence referendum. To get the details right for the new thriller, he drew on his boyhood in Scotland and scouted locations for scenes in the book while attending the Bloody Scotland crime writers conference in Stirling.

All books are available on BookShop.org, IndyBound.org, Barnes & Noble, your local bookshop, and Amazon. eBooks are available in multiple formats including Apple, Kobo, Nook and Kindle.

He’s a member of Mystery Writers of America, Int’l Assoc. of Crime Writers, and he’s the new president of the Delaware Valley chapter of Sisters in Crime. He lives in Philadelphia. James has an MFA from the University of Washington in Seattle. His current, work-in-progress is a mystery-thriller set in Oregon’s wine country…A (pinot) Noir, called Witness Tree.

For a full list of appearances and readings, make sure to check out his Events/About page. And follow this blog!

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