The Silent Daughter: Shortlisted for the Scottish Crime Book of the Year

The Silent Daughter begins when Maria Morrison is found critically injured on the steps of Edinburgh’s Fleshmarket Close. Her husband Chris, an experienced reporter, refuses to accept that she simply fell, especially when their travelling daughter Ruth cannot be reached.

Chris is difficult, suspicious and often unfair, but his determination kept me reading as every family member revealed another lie. I particularly liked the anonymous passages woven between chapters, where a hidden voice recalls Ruth’s childhood with an intimacy that feels loving and increasingly disturbing. Even small details, such as the cracked family photograph on Maria’s phone, carry a sense of something broken long before the accident.

Emma Christie uses Edinburgh’s closes, hospital corridors and newspaper offices to build a tense family mystery around identity, guilt and the damage caused by silence. Cleverly structured and emotionally messy, this kept changing who I trusted until the truth finally came together.