Note: Thank you to NetGalley, Storm Publishing, and author Andrew James Greig for the advanced reader copy of this book. This review will also be posted on NetGalley. What follows is my unbiased review of the book.

The Devil’s Cut is the second book in author Andrew James Greig’s series set in a small town in northern Scotland. It is a police procedural that follows Detective Investigator Corstophine and his department as they investigate cases. Corstophine has a good crew under him, but he faces challenges due to the limited resources of a small town. He’s also still mourning his late wife and is a bit agoraphobic, preferring to do his job and sit at home drinking.

One of the few things that gets him out is hill-climbing (or hiking as we call it on this side of the pond). One of his group members apparently dies while hiking alone on a nearby peak. The book opens with this, and Corstophine is later with the group as they hold a wake for the man in a nearby pub. Corstorphine seems to be accepted by the men, but there’s a palpable sense of relief once he departs a bit early.

The man was a wealthy distillery owner, Jack McCoach. It seems like a cut-and-dried case, as his cause of death is ruled to be a heart attack and his body is cremated. However, the man’s sister, Patricia, later visits Corstophine and claims she received a message from Jack in the afterlife that he was poisoned. Corstorphine is sceptical, but listens to her, as she insists her brother was poisoned and that there’s someone out to get the McCoach family. When Patricia is attacked and mutilated, it looks like her otherworldly predictions might have some traction.

There have been other crime incidents recently in town as well, which have caught their attention, including catalytic converter thefts and potential drug dealing. A woman has also committed suicide by throwing herself in front of a train, clearly caught on CCTV. All of this seems to be unrelated, but there is a common thread that ties them together, even if the culprits aren’t the same.

The Devil’s Cut is an excellent police procedural. Living in a rural area of New England seems to be remarkably similar to rural areas of Scotland. I could picture the setting when the group went hiking in the mountains, as well as later on when there was a stand-off outside a hiking hut known as a bothy. Greig’s descriptions made it easy for me to picture the countryside.

I figured out part of the mystery early on, and as soon as one clue dropped, I figured out the rest of it. It wasn’t really a surprise how it played out, but I still enjoyed it. The story had me on the edge of my seat as it’s also written as a thriller. I knew someone was after the family, but not sure of the motivation until that one clue surfaced. How it was going to play out was surprising at times, so it wasn’t predictable even when I had figured out what was going on. There are also several standoffs where I wasn’t sure what was going to happen.

The characters from the first book are all back on the police force. Corstorphine has a good working relationship with the others on the force, but he makes mistakes. There’s a big one here that could have potentially led to the crime being solved sooner. DC Frankie MacKenzie concludes that by excluding someone from many of the investigation’s specifics, they lost valuable time, but she’s reluctant to tell Corstorphine that. Whether it’s because Corstorphine will blame the wrong person or because he will blame himself is debatable. Still, I like the interplay between the characters. The people are human, and mistakes do get made.

The Devil’s Cut is an excellent police procedural and mystery. It had a good pace to it, the characters are compelling, and it’s a beautiful setting. I like that Corstorphine is still smarting over the loss of his wife, but is beginning to see a time coming when she will no longer be a part of his life. The fact that his friends breathe a sigh of relief once he leaves is indicative of the life of a police officer, too. The details of the mystery rang true, as people have a tendency not to see things as clearly as they should.

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