The Misty Isle · #3
The Talisker Dead
Digging up the past... is enough to kill you...When a teenage islander goes missing on Burns Night, D.I. Duncan McAdam takes a strong interest despite the apparent lack of concern shown by the boy's father. When a woman's body is soon discovered in Talisker Bay, with a single stab wound to the chest, Duncan and his team realise they have a killer on the island.
A brutal winter storm is battering the island, and it soon becomes a race against time to find the missing boy. Is he hiding or is someone keeping him from coming home? As the team delve deeper into the lives of the teenager and the deceased, they come to the conclusion that nothing is quite what it seems and more than one person has a vested interest in concealing the truth.
A closely guarded secret, lying in a shallow grave for years, is under threat of being revealed and no one seems willing to face up to their past... least of all, Duncan McAdam himself. Duncan has a decision to make, one that will impact not only his life but the lives of those he cares about the most. Does he have the courage to follow his instincts? And just who is he acting in the interests of... the people he loves... or purely for himself?
The Talisker Dead is the third book in the new Amazon #1 bestselling Misty Isle series from the 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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