A MESSAGE FROM ALINE TEMPLETON
When I began writing the Detective Kelso Strang series, there was no doubt in my mind about where it would be set. Scotland is in my blood, with Scots on both sides as far back as I have traced my family, and with Police Scotland having become a unitary force I could see how a Serious Rural Crime Squad would be an asset to deploy as necessary to places where there was now no competent local CID.
It has given me the excuse to introduce my readers to some of the most beautiful parts of the country, which perhaps inevitably took me to the famous Island of Skye for the first book in the series. The others have been set in the north, south, east and west of Scotland, places that all have their distinctive character.
But small isolated places that look idyllic are often, with their close-knit communities, claustrophobic to live in, seething with inner tensions and prey to the sort of crime too that thrives in relatively unpoliced areas. When violence erupts and the SRCS is summoned it is often, as DCI Strang has said, like lifting a stone and exposing all the creatures that have thrived concealed in the dark.