Truth to Tell: The enthralling Scottish crime thriller

by Aline Templeton

It is a bitterly cold night, with rain falling and an edge of snow. Under the sickly yellow lighting in the lorry park, three men are looting precious cargo from the tarpaulined trailers - but the crack of a gunshot pierces the night, and everything changes.



Six months on and a key witness at the subsequent murder trial finds herself under police protection in the remote ancient highlands around Loch Torridon. She is determined to find out what happened to her beloved Callan, one of the three looters, but everything becomes more complicated by another local murder, and the arrival of DCI Kelso Strang.



The local dramatic peaks form the uncompromising backdrop of the police investigation, and Strang must contend with seismic events that will change many lives to get to the truth.

334 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 21, 2026

About the author

Aline Templeton grew up in the East Neuk of Fife and was educated at St Leonards School, St Andrews and Cambridge University. She has worked in education and broadcasting and has written numerous stories and articles for national newspapers and magazines. Templeton was a bench Justice of the Peace for ten years and is a former Chair of the Society of Authors in Scotland, now living in Edinburgh. She is married with a grown up family.

She has written nine crime novels, published by Hodder & Stoughton in Britain, and has also been published in the United States and several European countries. After writing seven stand-alone books, she started a series set in Galloway and featuring DI Marjory Fleming, the first of which – Cold In The Earth – was an Ottakar's Crime Novel of the Month and an Independent Best Summer Read. The second, The Darkness and the Deep, was published in July 2006, and there are now six books in the DI Fleming series.

Reviews

[Elizabeth Sirett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wedding bells will be chiming in the near future for DCI Kelso Strang, head of Scotland's Rural Crime Squad, and his lawyer fiancée Catriona Fleming. Cat is a familiar figure from Aline Templeton's earlier series, as is her mother Marjory, a retired DI, and they're busy arranging flowers, seating plans and meetings with the vicar. Kelso is keen to be married but less enthused by all the wedding-related fuss, so when a body turns up in a remote Highland village, he's guiltily relieved.

The body belongs to Brodie Campbell, the local gamekeeper, who was useful to the local police. But Brodie was so unpopular with most of the village that everyone's a potential suspect, and Kelso finds just about everyone reluctant to talk in case they incriminate someone else.

DS Livvy Murray has been detailed to help Kelso with the investigation. The shortcomings of the Airbnb they're staying in make her keen to shift the blame for the murder on to outsiders from Glasgow's gang culture so that she and Kelso can go home, especially after the arrival of a capable graduate entry DC whom Kelso has worked with before. In the past Livvy wasn't above going rogue in pursuit of her own theories, but she has calmed down a lot. All the same, her tendency to use her initiative pays off, with a discovery that comes close to cracking the case.

Aline Templeton certainly knows how to put together a storyline that's almost as twisty as the mountain passes. As well as the murder, there's a drug problem, common in small communities where both work and leisure activities are thin on the ground for young people; and a parallel investigation is looking at hijackings of deliveries from local fish processors. But as always in Templeton's books, the characters and the locations are at least as important as the plot. The story unfolds against a spectacular Highlands backdrop of mountains, lochs and precipitous roads; the weather is as dramatic as the landscape and causes more than one problem for the SRCS team.

Kelso, Livvy and Cat are familiar figures, and following their development is one of the great pleasures of the series. Kelso's boss DCS Jane Borthwick, the redoubtable JB, makes an occasional appearance and has work problems of her own; and workshy DI Mackenzie from the local force is no help at all.

In the village, the women are nursing secrets. Mairead runs the local café despite fragile health, and has plenty to hide, especially from her feckless artist husband. Zoe Cooper, waitress at the café, girlfriend of local bad boy Jago Innes and woman of mystery, comes and goes as she pleases. And then there's Anna Bruce, who recently moved to the village and has created a thriving catering business; no one seems to know anything about her.

Eventually secrets are revealed, Brodie Campbell's killer is unmasked, and Kelso and Livvy can go home – he to prepare for his wedding, she to await their next case. As, no doubt, will Aline Templeton's many readers with eager anticipation, me among them; Kelso Strang is rapidly becoming one of Scotland's most engaging detectives.
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Reviewer: Lynne Patrick
For Lizzie Sirett (Mystery People Group)

[Jo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have enjoyed all the Fleming/Strang series, and this was another solid installment.
My only slight quibble would be that the ending felt a little bit rushed. I would have liked a few more of the loose ends to have been more thoroughly tied up, hence 4 stars not 5.

[Mrs Helen Gove · Rating 5 out of 5]

Truth To Tell

Very good book with lots of twists and turns. I would like to have more involvement with Kelso Strang and Livvy, and less with the domestic side of his life.