Douglas Skeleton is one of Scotland's most celebrated crime writers with dark stories that meld history and contemporary life stretching from the tough streets of his hometown of Glasgow to the wildness of the Scottish Highlands.
We're talking Where Demons Hide, Douglas's latest thriller with a supernatural edge, featuring crime reporter, Rebecca Connolly.
Hi there. I'm your host, Jenny Wheeler. And in today's Binge Reading, Rebecca’s skepticism is challenged after a body is found on a lonely moor in the center of a pentagram. A woman has been frightened to death.
But was she killed by supernatural means or is there a more down to earth explanation?
This Week's Giveaway
Our giveaway this week is a preview of my new mystery. Susannah's Secret the second book in the Home At Last series set in 1870s, California,
Get the first four chapters of Susannah’s Secret – download here: https://dl.bookfunnel.com/t7i1brbmtt
As usual links for downloading the first four chapters of that book, plus all the links to this episode can be found in the show notes on the website www.thejoysof bingereading.com
And remember if you enjoy what you hear, add a review of the show to your favorite podcast site, so others will hear about us too.
Links to this episode
The Ice Cream Wars: Douglas Skelton and Lisa Brownlie: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/1648791
BBC Documentary on the Ice Cream Wars:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001d3jv
Culloden and the Jacobite Defeat: https://www.nts.org.uk/visit/places/culloden
James Stewart: James of the Glen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Stewart_of_the_Glen
Kidnapped, Robert Louis Stevenson; https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/325128.Kidnapped
Alan Breck Stewart: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Breck_Stewart
Hebrides: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrides
Peter Williamson and Indian Peter: https://www.amazon.com/Indian-Peter-Extraordinary-Adventures-Williamson/dp/1845960327
The Earl of Mar and the Mar Rebellion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_of_Mar
On Douglas Skelton's reading list
Ed McBain: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evan_Hunter
Denzil Myrick: https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/denzil-myrick
Caro Ramsay: https://www.caroramsay.com/
Michael J Malone: https://booksfromscotland.com/bfs-author/michael-j-malone/
Neil Broadfoot: https://www.scottishbooktrust.com/authors/neil-broadfoot
Gordon Brown: https://gordonjbrown.com/about/
Robert Crais: https://www.robertcrais.com/
Dennis Lehane: http://dennislehane.com/
S. G. MacLean: https://www.amazon.com/Bookseller-Inverness-S-G-MacLean-ebook/dp/B093VP2QXW
Lin Anderson: http://www.lin-anderson.com/about.htm
John Prebble Scottish histories – The Lion In The North: https://www.amazon.com/Lion-North-Personal-Scotlands-History/dp/0140056459
Where to find Douglas online
Website: https://www.douglasskelton.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/douglasskeltonauthor
Twitter: @DouglasSkelton1
Instagram: @dougskelton1
Introducing author Douglas Skelton
Scottish thriller author Douglas Skelton
Jenny Wheeler: But now here's Douglas. Hello there Douglas, and welcome to the show. It's great to have you with us.
Douglas Skelton: Thanks very much. It's great to be here.
Jenny Wheeler: I'm in Auckland, New Zealand and it's 8:30 pm and you are near to Glasgow and just starting your day. Have you had breakfast?
Douglas Skelton: Yes, I had a very quick something to eat before we came on.
Jenny Wheeler: That's great.
Douglas Skelton: And now I'm now drinking a coffee, so if you hear me slurping, you'll know that's what I'm doing.
Jenny Wheeler: Oh, that's wonderful. And we've already had a conversation about how we might be interrupted by your rescue dog, so we don't mind if she or he joins the show a little bit later on.
Douglas, you started out writing nonfiction true crime stories, but now you've moved on to fiction, particularly today we are going to be discussing the Rebecca Connolly series. Why did you make that switch to fiction?
Douglas Skelton: Well, there were a number of reasons for that. I'd always wanted to write fiction, I think is the main one. But because I was a journalist, ,it was like a natural extension to move into nonfiction when I started writing books and because I had written features on true crime, that was a natural extension as well.
That's what I would begin with. But as the nonfiction career progressed, I started to do more historical subjects.
The move from non fiction to ficton
And fiction has always been what I wanted to do, and even with the nonfiction, I put a sheen of storytelling on top of the facts. So once I had done about number eleven in non-fiction books, I think I'd gone about as far as I wanted to go with them.
There were very few subjects that I wanted to write about after that. And I thought, well, I've got a reputation now. I've got eleven books under my belt. Let's go for the fiction.
Jenny Wheeler: Yes, that's a very good place to start with a back list of eleven books. We'll talk a little bit about a couple of those later on. Did you do, crime reporting when you were a journalist?
Douglas Skelton: I did. I started my journalistic career with a weekly newspaper, a local newspaper in the west end of Glasgow, and basically, a very, very small team.
Two or maybe three reporters and an editor at that time. And basically, I became the crime reporter by default, which meant that the editor at the time, Danny Brown, said to me, Why don't you arrange to go round the various police offices in our area every week and get the crime reports?
So that was me. I then became effectively the crime reporter, as well as the movie reviewer, and occasionally the council reporter, and sometimes add feature writer because that's how it goes with weekly newspapers.
Rebecca Connolly, thriller protagonist
And of course, as the industry, began to retract, more and more fell onto fewer and fewer people, and that kind is reflected in the Rebecca Connolly stories.
Jenny Wheeler: Yes it is. So Rebecca is a very energetic, Scottish reporter, a intrepid woman who is always getting mixed up in crime stories.
She's a very likable character, a not-to-be-denied sort of character. What do you enjoy most about writing her as your lead character?
Douglas Skelton: Well, I've got to say that, to begin with, I don't enjoy writing. Which is a very strange thing to say, but Dorothy Parker, the American writer once said, I don't like writing. I like having written.
And that's what I'm like. writing to me as a chore. It's just what I do. But what do I find, to enjoy about writing Rebecca? She's very focused, which I'm not.
I tend to go off and search of shiny things. But Rebecca will focus on something and she will get the job done as well as she possibly can.
And I, quite like that about her. The downside to that is that she tends to let her private life, life fallow to an extent.
Drawing on personal experience
But I certainly do enjoy the fact that she's very focused, and that she has principles.
Over the series, they have had to be eroded slightly as she becomes more realistic about the world and about the industry that she's in.
But she still has this basic core principle that she will do the best possible job that she could.
She will try and get to as many of the facts she knows she's not gonna get the full story, because we never do get the full story, but she'll get as much of the story as she possibly can. And contrary to popular, belief a lot of reporters are like that.
Jenny Wheeler: Yes. Have you known anybody that's rather similar to Rebecca, yourself?
Douglas Skelton: Yes, there have been a couple. She's not based on anybody in particular. Not even an amalgam. There have been a couple over the years.
I did it myself when I was doing the book about The Ice Cream Wars here in Scotland, which was a miscarriage of justice, along with, my friend Lisa Brownlie.
We were pretty focused then, and that was six months of intense research to pull that book together. Lot of interviews, a lot of treking about banging doors and finding people.
We were pretty focused to do that. And our personal lives tended to go in the back burner during that time as.
The Ice Cream Wars - a notorious killing
Jenny Wheeler: The Ice Cream Wars, for those of us who don't have a clue what those were. Give us a very quick guide.
Douglas Skelton: It was a quite dreadful mass murder in Glasgow in 1984 when a fire claimed the lives of six members of one family in the east end of Glasgow, including an 18-month-old child.
It was linked to the rivalry between ice cream van operators. I don't know if you have these in New Zealand, but what we have are vans that go around the streets selling ice cream, sweets, crisps. don't know if they still do it, but they used to sell
Jenny Wheeler: We have Mr. Whippy here? Yes.
Douglas Skelton: It's something similar to Mr. Whippy although we'll have to stress that Mr. Whippy was not involved in this, and it culminated in this quite, dreadful crime. Two men were eventually convicted of the murder, but they proclaimed their innocence.
Jenny Wheeler: Gosh.
Douglas Skelton: Lisa and I picked this up in the early nineties and wrote a book on it and that kicked off a campaign to have them freed, and about 10 years later, they were cleared at the Court of Appeal.
Jenny Wheeler: Gosh. And has anybody ever been anyone arrested and charged since.
Linking ancient and modern
Douglas Skelton: No. There had been no further investigations as far as I'm aware. There have been plenty of documentaries. In fact, the BBC just did a two parter, over here, on it.
But certainly, there seems to be no appetite to find out what actually happened that night.
