When We Were Killers – A gripping, shocking dark academia thriller

Our summary description

As Independent Scottish booksellers, we write all of our descriptions personally, we hope you enjoy this one.

When We Were Killers is set amid the ancient courtyards and coastal chill of St Andrews University, where first year student Finn Nethercott arrives already on the margins. From the outset, he senses a hierarchy built on wealth and lineage, a place where some rules simply do not apply.

Finn is drawn into an intense friendship group of four history students fascinated by the earliest myths and rituals of Scotland. Their studies spill beyond lecture halls into reckless nights, abandoned castles and remote lochs, blurring scholarship with obsession. What begins as intellectual curiosity darkens into rivalry, secrecy and dangerous experimentation.

As their search for a lost hallucinogen deepens, so too does Finn’s uncertainty about what is real and what is imagined. Trust fractures, and the group’s shared fixation edges towards violence. When We Were Killers is a tense literary thriller about power, belonging and the perilous allure of ideas taken too far.