A Winter Grave: a chilling new mystery set in the Scottish highlands

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His daughter, Addie, is a meteorologist in the remote Scottish Highlands. She has installed weather stations; her task is to take weather readings and report any changes. She discovers the body of a man encased in ice and suspended in an ice cave. He is identified as George Younger, an investigative reporter who went missing three months earlier. He said he was going hiking on a hill-walking holiday. He was never known to be a hiker or outdoorsman. In the autumn of 2021, Peter watched and read about the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow with a growing sense of concern. Just three months earlier, the United Nations Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had published their scariest prediction yet: that on current carbon emissions we were set to reach a 1.5º Celsius increase in global temperatures within the next two decades, leading to catastrophic environmental disaster.

Brodie has an ulterior motive for volunteering to take on this case. He has received a death sentence of his own, and has something personal he has to get out of the way before he departs this earth for good. So, in reality, he is a man with nothing to lose, and a will to live. Arriving during an ice storm, Brodie and pathologist Dr. Sita Roy, find themselves the sole guests at the inappropriately named International Hotel, where Younger's body has been kept refrigerated in a cake cabinet. But evidence uncovered during his autopsy places the lives of both Brodie and Roy in extreme jeopardy.

This is a chilling novel – both literally and metaphorically. Set in the year 2051, after decades of politicians ignoring and denying the effects of climate change, the equatorial regions are now far too hot for human habitation, whole swathes of low-lying areas are totally submerged in the sea and, because of the destruction of the Gulf Stream, Scotland now suffers winters of stormy Arctic severity. A young meteorologist takes a work based trek up a mountain and is faced with a dead body, frozen in ice. This chance discovery leads to a rollercoaster of secrets and intrigue and the body count starts to mount in this bleak and remote landscape. Cameron Brodie is an experienced policeman who’s just received a devastating health prognosis. As a keen hillwalker, he is asked to fly to the village to ascertain whether the death was accidental, or more sinister. I do a very detailed synopsis, I do the drafting side of it when I am working on the synopsis,” he says. “Then when I’m finished it, I’m finished it – I don’t want to see it again, it’s on the spike!” It was 2051 and Detective Cameron Brodie was a veteran cop out of Glasgow, when a body was discovered deeply entombed in the ice high above the little village of Kinlochleven. Cameron volunteered to investigate as he knew his estranged daughter Addie was living in Kinlochleven and he wanted to see her before it was too late. Pathologist Dr Sita Roy joined Cameron on their journey, arriving in the middle of a ferocious ice storm. But making their way through the snow and ice, the International Hotel where they were staying, loomed large. The power was out, there was no hot food or drink to be had, and the body of George Younger, which had been refrigerated in a cake cabinet, was rapidly thawing. The following day, with the assistance of the local cop, as well as Cameron, Dr Roy performed the autopsy of Mr Younger. What she found left no room for doubt that he was murdered - and immediately put herself and Cameron in intense danger...

With comms and the internet still down, and the Ice storm having cut off the village, Brodie continues to investigate this puzzling murder. But certain incidents add an atmosphere of menace, and then there’s another murder, which won’t be the last before Brodie departs the Kinlochleven. At the end of it, I thought I have got to write about this, and the problem was how. I don’t want to preach to people so I decided so I would write a conventional thriller and set it 30 years in the future and the world would just be changed by the climate crisis.” Time hop

Unusually for the painstaking researcher, Covid travel restrictions meant Peter wasn’t able to get to Scotland. As another storm closes off communications and the possibility of escape, Brodie must face up not only to the ghosts of his past, but to a killer determined to bury forever the chilling secret that George Younger's investigations had threatened to expose.