Three homicidal maniacs. Two radioactive shoes. One body in a suitcase.

When Dr David Cairney, a politics lecturer, goes missing on the way home from his retirement party, his wife asks ex-boxer and journalist Robbie Gould for help. Gould wants nothing to do with it. But he needs the money.

Meanwhile, the body of another politics lecturer, Professor Stephen Hogg, has been found, his body folded into a suitcase beside the Clydeside Expressway. While poking around the murder victim's office, Gould encounters pathologist Sarah Badar. She worked on Hogg's post mortem, only to find her report redacted, and she wants answers too.

As the pair delve deeper into the case, they unearth connections between the two academics and a rogues' gallery of oddballs and grotesques including rival gangsters from Edinburgh and Glasgow, a llama-farm owner in Kirkintilloch and an ex-KGB general with a trepanned skull and a thirst for vengeance.

Sarah and Gould find themselves immersed in a world of missing Kremlin diamonds and pre-digital espionage – all coded signals, orange peel and scraps of red thread.



Martin Stewart's Young Adult work was published in the UK and US by Penguin Random House and nominated for several national awards. His Middle Grade series, Bridget Vanderpuff, launched in 2023 with Zephyr. Martin's work has been published all over the world and translated into multiple languages. A native of Glasgow, he now lives in Troon with his wife, two children and a very big dog. His first adult fiction novel, Double Proof, was Shortlisted for the Bloody Scotland Debut Prize 2024.



'Robbie Gould is back and as radioactive as ever, taking on gangsters, spies and inclement weather in his trademark bonnet. Loose Threads has bags of style, a madcap plot and patter to rival Glasgow's biggest gobshites. Martin Stewart is my favourite new crime writer'



'Pacy, punchy and propulsive. Martin Stewart is a gifted proponent of the no-fannying-about school of crime fiction'



'I absolutely loved it. Robbie Gould is a genius creation ... It's brilliant'