Paper Thistle Author Insights

Author Insight: Sarah Jane Douglas writes the Highlands as danger not therapy and that’s the whole point

The Highlands aren’t a therapist; they’re terrain with teeth. Douglas walks after her mother’s death[...]

Author Insight: Why Heather Darwent’s dark academia refuses the cosy thriller packaging

Darwent’s Edinburgh isn’t candlelit escapism; it’s a sorting machine. The clique doesn’t tempt, it recruits:[...]

Author Insight: E. S. Thomson writes women with scalpels not slogans and the genre can’t soften it

Thomson doesn’t write “strong women” as slogans. She writes women with expertise—poisons, bodies, institutions—and lets[...]

Author Insight: The evolution of Lucy Ribchester’s Edinburgh from backdrop to accomplice

Ribchester stops treating Edinburgh as scenery and starts treating it as a participant. In Murder[...]

Author Insight: Lucy Foley writes privilege like a pressure cooker and refuses the polite payoff

Foley’s real weapon isn’t the corpse; it’s the room. A lodge, an island, an apartment[...]

Author Insight: Margaret McDonald and the quiet reinvention of Scots voice on the page as power not garnish

Scots gets used like garnish: a few phonetic sprinkles, then back to “proper” English before[...]

Author Insight: Why Ian Rankin turned Edinburgh into a crime scene and never let the city off the hook

Edinburgh sells itself as culture with safe danger: closes, gothic sheen, festival glitter. Rankin treats[...]

Author Insight: Naomi Kelsey turns familiar myths into evidence and leaves the genre nowhere to hide

Witches aren’t atmosphere; they’re paperwork. Kelsey takes North Berwick 1589 and shows accusation as governance:[...]

Author Insight: The evolution of Kerry Barrett’s page-turner tenderness from gloss to grit

Barrett learned gloss first: pace, cliffhangers, the sugar-rush promise you’ll be safe. Then she weaponised[...]

Author Insight: Why Adam Nicolson keeps puncturing the heritage-history sheen

Nicolson should be a heritage salesman: Sissinghurst in the blood, islands inherited, access guaranteed. Instead[...]