The Misty Isle · #1
A Long Time Dead
You can’t stay dead forever…
A group of high school students gather on the Isle of Skye’s remote Coral Beach for a hedonistic night of partying to celebrate the passing of their final exams. The new millennium is on the horizon and the future beckons, promising new hope and a fresh wind of optimism. In the coming days, many will leave the island for work or to study on the mainland, whereas others will remain on Skye and forge a more traditional path much as their families have done for centuries before them.
That is… all but one…
D.I. Duncan McAdam is dispatched home to the Misty Isle. A body has been found buried in a remote location on the Waternish peninsula. Well preserved in the peat, Isla Matheson – missing for the better part of two decades – is revealed to a shocked island community. A teenage runaway is dead… and no one is talking…
Joining a small team of detectives, Duncan is tasked with revisiting those who knew Isla, those who cared for her… and those with the potential to kill her… In a remote community well used to settling scores among themselves, will they trust one of their own when he asks questions or will they persevere with the façade of ignorance?
A Long Time Dead is the first book in the new Misty Isle series of crime thrillers from the Amazon #1 multi-million selling crime writer, J M Dalgliesh, the author of the Hidden Norfolk and Dark Yorkshire books.
The series
Tucked between brooding skies and rugged coastline, The Misty Isle series whispers its secrets through wind-scoured cliffs and the echo of waves crashing on ancient rock. This is not the Scotland of postcards—it’s the darker, quieter version, where every stone seems to remember and every silence carries weight. In this shadowy corner of the world, D.I. Duncan McAdam returns to Skye, not just to solve crimes, but to face the ghosts that never quite left him.
Read full series description
Each installment unfolds like the mist itself—slowly, deliberately—revealing the island’s tangled loyalties, long-buried guilt, and the fragile thread that holds a fractured community together. McAdam, a man shaped as much by personal tragedy as professional resolve, navigates murder investigations that feel less like puzzles and more like excavations. These aren’t just crimes—they're ruptures in the surface of a place already worn thin by time.
Fans of slow-burn detective fiction with a psychological edge will find themselves pulled into a setting as compelling as the mysteries at its heart. There’s a gothic stillness to the storytelling, a sense that the island itself is watching, waiting, remembering. With taut prose and an immersive atmosphere, the series blends crime, isolation, and character-driven drama in a way that lingers long after the final page.
The Misty Isle doesn’t shout to get your attention—it draws you in, quiet as fog, and just as hard to shake.
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