The Missing and the Dead by Stuart MacBride on Tour June 2015, Includes Giveaway!

Book Details:

Genre: Mystery, Thriller
Published by: HarperCollins
Publication Date: June 2, 2015
Number of Pages: 592
Series: Logan McRae #10, (Each is a Stand Alone Novel)
ISBN: 0007494602 (ISBN13: 9780007494606)
Purchase Links:

Synopsis:
One mistake can cost you everything…
When you catch a twisted killer there should be a reward, right? What Acting Detective Inspector Logan McRae gets instead is a ‘development opportunity’ out in the depths of rural Aberdeenshire. Welcome to divisional policing – catching drug dealers, shoplifters, vandals and the odd escaped farm animal.
Then a little girl’s body washes up just outside the sleepy town of Banff, kicking off a massive manhunt. The Major Investigation Team is up from Aberdeen, wanting answers, and they don’t care who they trample over to get them.
Logan’s got enough on his plate keeping B Division together, but DCI Steel wants him back on her team. As his old colleagues stomp around the countryside, burning bridges, Logan gets dragged deeper and deeper into the investigation.
One thing’s clear: there are dangerous predators lurking in the wilds of Aberdeenshire, and not everyone’s going to get out of this alive…

Author Bio:

I was born in Dumbarton — no one knows why, not even my mother — and moved up to Aberdeen at the tender age of two, dragging my mother, father, and a pair of wee brothers with me. There followed a less than stellar academic career, starting out in Marchburn Primary School, where my evil parents forced me to join the cub scouts (specialising in tying unnecessary knots in things and wearing shorts). Thence to Middlefield Academy for some combat recorder practice.
Having outstayed our welcome in Heathryfold we stopped thencing and tried going hence instead. To Westhill. To a housing development built over the remains of a pig farm. Sounds a bit suspect, but that’s what the official story was when all the householders found teeth and bones coming to the surface of their neatly tended vegetable plots. Pig farm. Right… Eventually I escaped from Westhill Academy with a CSE in woodwork, a deep suspicion of authority, and itchy shins.
Here followed an aborted attempt to study architecture at Herriot Watt in Edinburgh, which proved to be every bit as exciting and interesting as watching a badger decompose. If you’ve never tried it, I can wholly recommend giving it a go (watching mouldy badgers falling to bits, not architecture). So I gave up the life academic and went a-working offshore instead. That involved a lot of swearing as I recall. Swearing and drinking endless cups of tea. And I think I had Alpen every morning for about a year and a half. Can’t look at a bowl of the stuff now without getting the dry boak, sod how regular it keeps you. After my stint offshore I had a bash at being a graphic designer, a professional actor, an undertaker, a marketing company’s studio manager, a web designer, programmer, technical lead… Then last, but by all means least, finally circling the career drain by becoming a project manager for a huge IT conglomerate.
Shudder.
Anyway, while I was doing all that IT stuff, I wrote a wee book about an Aberdonian detective sergeant and his dysfunctional colleagues: Cold Granite. HarperCollins bought it, and overnight I went from a grumpy project manager caterpillar to a writing butterfly. As long as you can picture a six-foot-tall, pasty-white, bearded butterfly with no wings, that spends all its time hanging about the house in its jammies.
Stuart has recently been crowned WORLD STOVIES CHAMPION at the 2014 Huntly Hairst.

My Thoughts:
The Missing and the Dead is the ninth novel in the The Logan McRae series and is set in Aberdeen, Scotland and also the first I have read in the series, I suppose I need to start at the beginning of the series to get a real feel for the characters. That said, even though this is the ninth in the series, I had no problem reading it as a standalone book. 

It continues the story of Acting Detective Inspector Logan McRae as he does his daily job. When a little girl is found in the pool of water outside Banff, Logan is pulled deep into the investigation. The Major Investigation Team is all over the case and pushes Logan out, their investigation etc, but Logan has a hard time letting this one go, so against his superior DCI Steele and continues to investigate the murder of the girl. Along with trying to find out who the little girl is, there is a woman Helen who thinks that this little girl may be her daughter that was taken from her years earlier so he feels that he really needs to find out who the girl is and who killed her. 

Aside from this investigation, there are other cases that he and his team are working on, drug dealers, pedophiles and missing persons, plus chasing cows off the road. We are privy to the daily calls that Logan receives regarding things from burglaries to calls from higher ups who don't want or like Logan on the murdered girl's case or don't like him period. His superior DCI Roberta Steele is a brash, uncouth and loudmouth woman who wants Logan back on her team. She knows that Logan is one of the best detectives and will do what she can to get him back. 

Even though is book is huge, 581 pages huge, it is a page turner. I love British authors and I have said before that they do know how to tell a story, especially mysteries and thrillers. There is a fair amount of humor in the book, some vulgarity, mostly from DCI Steele, and I think that all of this is what keeps the story flowing. Characters that you can relate to, some you will like and others not. 

Aside from historical fiction, mysteries/thrillers have to be my next favorite genre to read. I also love British tv dramas, is there a tv show for this series I wonder? If there isn't there should be. The Logan McRae stories would certainly adapt to the screen very well. I enjoyed the book and look forward to reading the next one, and going back to start the series from the beginning. If you like a good mystery book that you can settle into with a glass of wine and a cat on your lap, then this is for you. Well you don't have to have the cat....!

I received a hard copy of the book and was not monetarily compensated for my review.

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Giveaway:
This is a giveaway hosted by Partners In Crime Virtual Book Tours for Stuart MacBride & Harper Collins. There will be one winner of 1 physical copy of The Missing and the Dead by Stuart MacBride to a US recipient. The giveaway begins on June 1st, 2015 and runs through July 3rd, 2015 

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