The Beasts of the Black Loch

Dr Ava Dickens, a scientist specialising in animal behaviour, uses her knowledge of the fauna around her to find a killer wreaking havoc on a remote estate in Scotland in the first in a new series. In 50,000 acres of remote Scottish mountains and moor sits Dorcha Hall: a former hunting lodge nestling amongst ancient forests, on the shores of the enigmatic ‘Black Loch’. At night, lights glow from within, smoke curls from its chimneys, and in the forgiving murk of the gloaming, it looks magical. In daylight, its mouldering plasterwork and failing plumbing present a less romantic reality. Dr Ava Dickens has come to Dorcha to visit her godson, Alastair – a young man whose parents’ sudden death has taken him from a quiet life in academia to owning Loch Dorcha. He and his very new wife are convinced the only way to make the estate work is to run the Hall as a hotel. But Ava is a rigorous scientist, her specialty animal behaviour, and she is by no means certain that the evidence is indicative of a successful outcome. When one of the hotel guests is found dead in his bed, having gulped down poisonous insect repellant rather than the whisky sitting next to it, Ava’s knowledge of the female Culicoides impunctatus – aka the Highland midge – leads her to doubt that it was an accident. And worse is to come…

Dr. Gay Marris is a retired research scientist. Her career focused on insect ecology, parasites and honey bee health. Her first novel, The Curtain Twitcher’s Book of Murder, set in the suburbs of the deceptively dangerous suburbs of 1960s London, where she grew up and was shortlisted for the CWA John Creasey First Novel Prize. Her second novel, The Beasts of the Black Loch, is the first in the Natural History of Murder series. Gay now lives in York with her husband, a cat and a tortoise.