By All Means

Procedural crime thriller based in Aberdeen, Scotland, featuring DCI Vanessa Fiske (who has just discovered she is pregnant) and DI Colin MacNee, in the run-up to the Scottish independence referendum, involving highly placed political figures. Two murders, one in a hospital (death by lethal injection) whose management has been outsourced to a US health management company, the other (body found at the bottom of an inspection chamber) on an oil rig run by a US drilling company. Both companies turn out to be owned by a secretive private equity conglomerate with highly placed political figures (including a former UK prime minister) on its board. A bomb at an American leisure development in the Cairngorms and a cyber attack on a US-owned mail-order fulfilment company in Cumbernauld raise questions about US investment, economic performance, nationalist terrorism and the referendum. Investigations implicate the closest adviser to the First Minister of Scotland and his past relationship with radical separatists and his collusion with the former UK prime minister to undermine the performance of US companies in Scotland. The novel culminates in DCI Fiske's attempts to arrest the fugitive former PM in the Caribbean where he has links to an offshore tax haven.