HarperCollinsPublishers
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First published as an anthology by HarperCollinsPublishers 2015
Copyright © Stuart MacBride 2015
Extract from In the Cold Dark Ground © Stuart MacBride 2015
‘DI Steel’s Bad Heir Day’ first published in the Evening Express 2010
http://www.eveningexpress.co.uk Copyright © Stuart MacBride 2010
‘Stramash’ first published as part of the Isle of Jura Distillery’s Writers’ Retreat. Copyright © Stuart MacBride 2011
The 45% Hangover first published by HarperCollinsPublishers. Copyright © Stuart MacBride 2014
22 Dead Little Bodies first published by HarperCollinsPublishers Copyright © Stuart MacBride 2015
Cover design © Blacksheep.com
Cover photographs © Aurelia Frey / Plain Picture (house); Shutterstock.com (seagulls)
Stuart MacBride asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This is a work of fiction. Any references to real people, living or dead, real events, businesses, organizations and localities are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity. All names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and their resemblance, if any, to real-life counterparts is entirely coincidental.
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Ebook Edition © NOVEMBER 2015 ISBN: 9780008141776
Version: 2015-10-24
Contents
Copyright
The Introduction
22 Dead Little Bodies
Dedication
Without Whom
— one small step (one giant leap) —
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
— dearly beloved —
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
— they never get rid of the shoes —
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
— every silver lining —
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
— boxes, bins and dead little bodies —
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
DI Steel’s Bad Heir Day
December 23rd
Stramash
The 45% Hangover
Friday 19th September: (The Day After)
Chapter 0
Thursday 18th September: (Referendum Day)
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Keep reading for an exclusive extract from IN THE COLD DARK GROUND
About the Author
By Stuart MacBride
About the Publisher
in which the writer drones on about the stories in this collection
Believe it or not, 22 Dead Little Bodies started life as a subplot in The Missing and the Dead. Well, half of it did, anyway. We trimmed seven subplots in total from The Missing and the Dead in order to slim it down to the chunky 160,000-word book that came out in January 2015 – so you can imagine how huge it was before. Loathe to throw this one away, I reworked it into what was meant to be a 10,000-word short story … and it ended up being 42,000 words long instead. Officially that makes it a novel. A short one, but a novel nonetheless. But while it made a nifty, and pretty sexy, little hardback, it was just a bit too small to turn into a full-length paperback. So we decided to bundle it in with two short stories and a novella, all set in Logan’s happy-go-lucky world.
‘Stramash’ was originally published as part of the Isle of Jura Distillery’s Writers’ Retreat project. ‘DI Steel’s Bad Heir Day’ appeared as a Christmas story in the Evening Express for charity, and later got bundled into an ebook with ‘Stramash’ under the title Partners in Crime. The 45% Hangover was a very rude ebook, then a lovely mini paperback in its own right. And now all of these stories live together, here, in one