The Dying Light – a pulse-pounding, must-read new crime thriller of 2025

Our summary description

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

Summer in Orkney brings light that refuses to fade. Days stretch on for eighteen hours, sleep comes fitfully, and the islands feel exposed beneath a sky that never quite darkens. When violence intrudes on this fragile calm, it is clear that someone dangerous has learned how to hide in plain sight.

Freya, a reporter shaped by patience and persistence, senses that the truth lies beneath what the community is willing to see. As she digs into the past, fragments begin to surface, linking present fear to long buried sins. The landscape itself becomes complicit, its beauty offering cover even as the pressure of heat and daylight frays nerves across the archipelago.

Set in Orkney, The Dying Light uses the islands’ relentless summer to unsettling effect. This is a crime novel attuned to atmosphere and moral weight, where investigation is as much about endurance as intellect. As the light stretches on, so does the danger, and the question becomes whether exposure will bring justice, or simply invite another death.