Lin Anderson

Lin Anderson is best known as the creator of the bestselling series of novels featuring forensic scientist Rhona MacLeod. Rhona's first case was in 2003, and next year marks 20 years since Driftnet. Lin also has a second mystery thriller series featuring private investigator Patrick de Courvoisier set in Cannes.

Lin's latest novel The Party House is a standalone thriller, and was published by Macmillan in August 2022. You can find The Party House and the rest of Lin's works on our catalogue.

Who were your heroes as you were growing up?

Enid Blyton’s Famous Five, which told me as a child I could solve mysteries better than adults. Robert Louis Stevenson’s characters in Kidnapped and Treasure Island.

In 2003 Driftnet was published. Did you realise at the time that it was going to change your life?

No. It was my first attempt at a novel after some successful short stories, one of which ‘Saving Mr Ugwu’ was recorded by the BBC. A short play developed through 7:84 Theatre Company, and a half hour drama for STV called Small Love.

My father was a Detective Inspector in Greenock and he worried about turning up at a scene of crime to find one of his three daughters being the victim. I decided to explore that dramatic premise through Driftnet, although I chose my protagonist Dr Rhona MacLeod to be female and a forensic scientist, because one of my Maths pupils at the time had gone to university to study what was then the relatively new subject of Forensic Science. The teenage victim, a boy, looks so like her she thinks he may be the son she gave up for adoption 17 years before.

I thought Driftnet would be a one off book, but I loved the world and the gang of characters so much I continued with them, going on to do a Diploma in Forensic Medical Science at my first university of Glasgow where I’d previously studied Maths.

Forensic scientist Rhona MacLeod has been part of your writing life for a long time now. Has it become easier or more difficult to write about her now she is so established, and all your readers have their own image of her?

When I was still teaching, the Principal of Napier University, a woman, came to speak to the mixed set of pupils. She said, ‘a woman is like a teabag, you don’t know her strength until you put her in hot water’. That’s what I do to Rhona, and by doing so, I learn more about her.

What is your writing routine? Do you have a writing desk or do you write wherever you are?

I like writing on a bed, with my feet up, the laptop on my knee, my notebooks, maps, research books spread to one side. I have a desk but rarely sit at it. I have a writing bothy out the back among the trees in Carrbridge which is my favourite place to write.

When I was still teaching, I wrote in the evenings and on weekends. Now, I write every day unless I’m travelling, especially if I’m in the midst of a book, like now. I don’t write at night nowadays, but instead read or watch dramas on my tablet (I don’t have a TV).

Your latest book is The Party House. Can you tell us a little about it and what it was like to write?

Place has always been a major character in my novels and many parts of Scotland feature in the Rhona MacLeod series.

When we went into lockdown, I was in my home village of Carrbridge in the Cairngorms. I had been thinking about a standalone novel for a while. One in which the crime and its investigation was viewed through the eyes of a suspect.

I decided on my walks through the woods of Carrbridge that I would set the novel in an imagined highland village, somewhere further west, where you could see the sea from the surrounding hills. I called this village Blackrig and knew it would be an end of the road village.

Blackrig, like my home village, is surrounded by woodland, mostly mature pine and birch, criss-crossed by paths, with blaeberries covering the forest floor. The surrounding hills are heather clad moorland.

The house Ard Choille, meaning High Wood was inspired by a house I visited years ago where many of the inside features were made with untreated birch. It felt like being in a treehouse.

When the small family-owned estate of Blackrig is sold to a conglomerate after the death of Lord Main, the villagers rename it the Party House, because of the rich clientele who are helicoptered in to carouse with no regard to the locals or the beautiful house and its surroundings, causing the virus deaths of six locals during the pandemic. When the Party House is reopened for business, a group of angry locals smash up the outside hot tub, exposing the body of teenager, Ailsa, who disappeared from the village five years before.

Now every male in the village is under suspicion again. The tale is told through the voices of Greg, the local gamekeeper and his new girlfriend, Joanne, up from London on a surprise visit.

I loved writing a crime story from a suspect’s POV. How would those who knew Greg react? How would you the reader react as the underlying currents and relationships in a small close knit community become exposed? Whose story would you believe?

Is there anything you can share with us about your latest project?

I’m currently working on the next Rhona book, which will be out in August 2023, which will be the 20th year of Rhona MacLeod (Driftnet came out in 2003).

It’s set in Glasgow and along the remote and beautiful beaches of the north west coast of Scotland. Can’t say more than that…

One book, piece of music or work of art that everyone should experience?

Salvador Dali’s Christ of Saint John of the Cross is a big favourite of mine. Based in Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum close to Glasgow University where Rhona works, it features in a few of the books.

What is the funniest or strangest thing any of your readers have told you?

My favourite was when a member of the audience at a library event in a well-to-do area of Glasgow came up at the end and asked if she might pose me a question. When I said yes, she said, ‘I just wanted to know how you get the sex so right in your books?’

I had to answer, ‘Practice’.

One thing you would do again and one you would definitely not!

I love wild swimming particularly on the west coast of Scotland, so I’ll be doing that again and again.

I had hoped to learn to ride my Harley Davidson Roadster. Alas, I believe that now to be a dream shattered!

Can you tell us one thing about yourself that your readers may not know?

I’ve co-written a rock musical called Voice of a Generation with John Sinclair, keyboard player with Ozzy Osbourne for 17 years.