The Hew Cullan Mysteries

Hue & Cry

The latest edition of Hue & Cry, book one in the Hew Cullan series of murder mysteries set in sixteenth century Scotland:

1579, St. Andrews. A thirteen-year old boy meets his death on the streets of the university city of St. Andrews and suspicion falls upon one of the regents at the university, Nicholas Colp. Hew Cullan, a young lawyer recently returned home from Paris, uncovers a complex tale of passion and duplicity, of sexual desire and tension within the repressive atmosphere of the Protestant Kirk and the austerity of the academic cloister

Fate & Fortune   Hew Cullan book two

1581: young St Andrews academic Hew Cullan is unhappy with his life and disillusioned with the law. After his father’s death he is invited by the advocate Richard Cunningham to complete his legal education in Edinburgh as Richard’s pupil at the bar. Among his father’s things Hew finds a manuscript entitled ‘In Defence of the Law’, directed to the Edinburgh printer, Christian Hall. At first, he resists its influence, but when a young girl is found dead on the beach at St Andrews, he is left unsettled and confused. He resolves to take the book to press and agrees to Richard’s offer. Embarking on his new life in the capital, he falls in love. His relationships are fraught with lies and secrets and lead to brutal murder on the borough muir. Hew suspects a link with the dead girl on the beach. As he begins his desperate search to find the killer, he finds that the truth lies closer to home

Time & Tide   Hew Cullan book three

1582, St Andrews. In the swell of a storm, a battered ship is wrecked in St Andrews harbour. Aboard is a young Flemish sailor — the only survivor. The cargo of the ship appears a welcome windfall but it soon brings devastation to the town as petty squabbling turns to hysteria and tragedy. Hew traces the ship to its source in Ghent, where he uncovers a strange secret. Unwilling to allow the law to take its course, he returns once more to the role of advocate and finds his deepest principles being tested to the core

Friend & Foe  Hew Cullan book four

St Andrews, 1583. The young king James VI is confined at Falkland palace, plotting his escape. Dissension rages between Kirk and Crown, the king and his ‘lord enterprisers’, and between the separate factions of the church. In St Andrews Castle, a bishop in decline plays out his darkest fantasies, while Hew and his friend Giles investigate the true source of his sickness, uncovering corruption at its heart. The death of a young soldier, implicating Hew’s sister and Giles’s wife Meg, leads Hew to an astonishing discovery, and towards his blackest hour, his fortunes inextricable from those of James himself.

Queen & Country  Hew Cullan book five

1587. Three years after his enforced departure to London, Hew is reconciled with King James VI and recalled to Scotland. He elopes to St Andrews with a young Englishwoman. The death of Mary, Queen of Scots has unleashed a wave of anti-English sentiment among the Scottish people, and fear and confusion in the king himself. James will grant his blessing to their controversial marriage on the condition that Hew discovers what lies behind a painting cunningly contrived to prick the young king’s conscience – an anamorphic death’s-head with his mother’s face.

Meanwhile in St Andrews, the death of a painter is troubling to Giles Locke, and the English Frances, struggling to adapt to a foreign town and culture, helps Hew find the link among the artists and intriguers of opposing courts, a quest for love – and life – requiring all his skills.

1588: A Calendar of Crime:

 

Set in the year of the Armada, 1588: A Calendar of Crime brings together five extended short stories featuring Hew Cullan, together with Frances, Giles, Meg and other characters from the Hew Cullan series.