Sticks and stones may break your bones… but your name is going to kill you…When the body of a missing teenager is discovered at Neist Point close to the famous lighthouse, battered and bruised, D.I. Duncan McAdam and his small team must determine how he died.
The Skye Ball, an annual event steeped in tradition where the next generation of the great and the good meet to celebrate their coming of age and present themselves to one another, has always been something of a spectacle for the islanders. The two-day affair culminates in a glitzy dinner followed by a night of Scottish Country Dancing where the young female attendees have a strict plan of who they will be introduced to, who they will dance with and to which song. The band plays almost until dawn when the gathered teenagers throw caution to the wind and leap together into Portree Harbour, a fitting end to mark their journey from adolescence into adulthood.
This year, a dozen teenagers go into the water... only one fails to resurface.
The rescue teams scour the bay in vain, searching for the missing boy; the last surviving heir to a Highland land baron dying from a terminal illness. With those who have vested interests in both the boy's survival - and indeed his untimely death - circling the scene, laying down markers of their own, how will Duncan determine whether the disappearance is a tragic accident or something much more sinister?
Death at Neist Point is the sixth book in the Amazon #1 Misty Isle series, penned by the multi-million selling British 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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