Winter Night

There will be whisky.There will be sex.And there will be death.There's been a murder at a start-up distillery on Islay – the victim's body, knife in the throat, dumped in the mash tun – and DS Hutton is summoned to assist DI Kallas in the investigation. Three new distilleries have opened within a couple of years of each other, the rivalries immediately running deep, acrimonious and deadly.There's business, there's money and there's sex, all wrapped up in the new wild west of the whisky bubble, 21st century Scotland's tulip fever. Fingers are pointed, accusations are easily made, and there are suspects around every corner.Meanwhile, the principal characters at the three distilleries are all drawn inexorably towards a Burns Supper one cold, dark Friday. Hutton dreads the event for what it is, but once there, he realises that something evil is afoot on this winter night, and that there is a malevolence abroad that promises some new, unimaginable horror, worse even than poetry.