THE LAST REFUGE by Craig Robertson

Recently I had the pleasure of attending the Bloody Scotland festival held in Stirling, an historic town near Glasgow, just after the Scottish independence referendum vote. Along with catching up with some great crime writers I'd met in person in New Zealand over the years or at Harrogate in 2012 (Denise Mina, Yrsa Sigurdardottir, Stuart MacBride, Martyn Waites, Mark Billingham etc), or interviewed over the phone or by email, I was also introduced to a bevy of fantastic scribes of mystery and mayhem who were 'new to me'...

I will be highlighting many of them over the coming weeks, both with 9mm interviews and reviews of their books, but for today I thought I'd mention the book I'm reading right now (the third since the festival that I picked up there, after Arild Stavrum's EXPOSED AT THE BACK and Luca Veste's DEAD GONE): Craig Robertson's THE LAST REFUGE.

Here's the blurb:

You can run from your past but you can never hide from yourself…

When John Callum arrives on the wild and desolate Faroe Islands, he vows to sever all ties with his previous life. He desperately wants to make a new start, and is surprised by how quickly he is welcomed into the close-knit community. But still, the terrifying, debilitating nightmares just won't stop.

Then the solitude is shattered by an almost unheard of crime on the islands: murder. A specialist team of detectives arrives from Denmark to help the local police, who seem completely ill-equipped for an investigation of this scale. But as tensions rise, and the community closes rank to protect its own, John has to watch his back.

But far more disquieting than that, John's nightmares have taken an even more disturbing turn, and he can't be certain about the one thing he needs to know above all else. Whether he is the killer…

I'm about 100 pages in, and it's very good so far. 

You can run from your past but you can never hide from yourself…
When John Callum arrives on the wild and desolate Faroe Islands, he vows to sever all ties with his previous life. He desperately wants to make a new start, and is surprised by how quickly he is welcomed into the close-knit community. But still, the terrifying, debilitating nightmares just won't stop.
Then the solitude is shattered by an almost unheard of crime on the islands: murder. A specialist team of detectives arrives from Denmark to help the local police, who seem completely ill-equipped for an investigation of this scale. But as tensions rise, and the community closes rank to protect its own, John has to watch his back.
But far more disquieting than that, John's nightmares have taken an even more disturbing turn, and he can't be certain about the one thing he needs to know above all else. Whether he is the killer… - See more at: http://books.simonandschuster.co.uk/Last-Refuge/Craig-Robertson/9781471127731#sthash.900xRsYn.dpuf

ou can run from your past but you can never hide from yourself…
When John Callum arrives on the wild and desolate Faroe Islands, he vows to sever all ties with his previous life. He desperately wants to make a new start, and is surprised by how quickly he is welcomed into the close-knit community. But still, the terrifying, debilitating nightmares just won't stop.
Then the solitude is shattered by an almost unheard of crime on the islands: murder. A specialist team of detectives arrives from Denmark to help the local police, who seem completely ill-equipped for an investigation of this scale. But as tensions rise, and the community closes rank to protect its own, John has to watch his back.
But far more disquieting than that, John's nightmares have taken an even more disturbing turn, and he can't be certain about the one thing he needs to know above all else. Whether he is the killer… - See more at: http://books.simonandschuster.co.uk/Last-Refuge/Craig-Robertson/9781471127731#sthash.900xRsYn.dpuf

ou can run from your past but you can never hide from yourself…
When John Callum arrives on the wild and desolate Faroe Islands, he vows to sever all ties with his previous life. He desperately wants to make a new start, and is surprised by how quickly he is welcomed into the close-knit community. But still, the terrifying, debilitating nightmares just won't stop.
Then the solitude is shattered by an almost unheard of crime on the islands: murder. A specialist team of detectives arrives from Denmark to help the local police, who seem completely ill-equipped for an investigation of this scale. But as tensions rise, and the community closes rank to protect its own, John has to watch his back.
But far more disquieting than that, John's nightmares have taken an even more disturbing turn, and he can't be certain about the one thing he needs to know above all else. Whether he is the killer… - See more at: http://books.simonandschuster.co.uk/Last-Refuge/Craig-Robertson/9781471127731#sthash.900xRsYn.dpuf