Overview

The Purified takes us back to Duncul, a Highland village on a peninsula by the Minch, where Afghan war veteran Eamon Ansgar lives in the castle and tries to hold on to a quieter life. That calm breaks when a violent murder lands on the community, the kind of killing the authorities would rather pretend no longer happens. Detective Maclean and the small local police force scramble to keep control, but the case pulls in outside investigators, and the village is already drawing attention because a political gathering is due to take place nearby. Then a separate discovery is raised from the waters of the Minch, and the story widens into international intrigue, with strangers in the hills, locals going missing, and Eamon sensing that the village is being used as a stage for something darker than one death.

Writing & Voice

We found the writing fast and propulsive. We get short, driving scenes and a crowded cast that keeps the pressure up. The landscape is not decoration. It is part of the threat, with water, weather, and distance working against everyone. We also felt a steady heat in the voice, an anger at systems and easy slogans, which suits the story’s appetite for collision.

Content & Perspective

We stay close to the village as it fills with factions and spectators. We see old Highland power structures brushing up against outsiders, activists, and hard belief. The book keeps moving between local policing, media noise, and the private choices people make when attention arrives. Eamon sits at the centre, not as a simple hero, but as someone with his own history and limits, pulled into a fight that is both personal and public.

Themes

We read this as a thriller about who owns a place and who gets to decide its future. The novel leans into nationalism, anarchism, land ownership, rewilding, and the way ideology can turn people into tools. We also felt the sea as a moral weight, because what is hidden offshore refuses to stay hidden. Under the action, the book keeps asking what purity means, and who it is meant to serve.

What Worked

• A tense Highland setting where geography and weather sharpen every mistake.
• An ensemble cast that makes the village feel crowded and combustible.
• Big stakes that stretch beyond the murder without losing momentum.

Minor Quibbles

• Some turns ask us to accept a lot happening at once in a small place.
• The speed can leave less space for a few emotional beats to land.

Final Thoughts

We liked how it turns a remote village into a pressure chamber, where belief, money, and fear all arrive with their hands out.

Rating: ★★★★½ / 5