It is every parent’s nightmare. The body of a young girl is found washed up on the shore and a massive manhunt is mounted across the north-east.
So begins the latest thriller from critically-acclaimed crime writer Stuart Macbride, who has decamped his cast of fictional police officers to Banff for his latest installment.
The Missing and the Dead, the newest volume in Mr Macbride’s Logan MacRae series, is set along the Moray Firth coast – a place close to the author’s heart, but a world away from the Aberdeen usually policed by his characters.
As part of his research, Mr Macbride joined the Press and Journal on a police drugs bust last year and admits his image of a sleepy Banff was shattered.
He said: “With Grampian Police becoming part of Police Scotland, I thought it would be an opportunity to shake things up for Logan McRae as well.
“So I managed to wangle spending several shifts with the police up in Banff. We went on drugs raids, and spent time with the road traffic unit.
“It was a complete eye-opener. It’s so different from everything else I’ve been writing about previously.
“It’s a case of Logan being a beat bobby again, dealing with all the things police officers deal with day in and day out, away from CID.
“Into that mix gets thrown chaos when the body of a little girl is washed up at Tarlair swimming pool.”
Mr Macbride marked this week’s release of The Missing and the Dead with a talk to local readers at Banff Academy.