As a massive storm batters the Scottish coast, Gordon Smith's home is falling into the sea. The trouble is: that's where he's been hiding the bodies. The story features a cast of colorful characters set on the Scottish coast in a Whodunnit frame. Ripe with heaping doses of grit, this was a stand out among other police procedurals for me.

The book begins in the coastal village of Clachmara ,which due to coastal erosion is slowly falling into the North Sea. A massive storm is blowing and a fishing boat is in trouble with the Coastguard helicopter in attendance.. Single parent Margaret Compton is horrified to realise that her young son Alfie is missing, a lad with a fascination for helicopters. Rushing into the storm she finds him watching the rescue attempt on the cliffs next to an abandoned house, Part of the cliff falls into the sea ,just after Margaret has snatched Alfie to safety and a cache of human bones is exposed..Only, what do you do when society is, quite rightly, really sodding concerned about a virus that’s officially killed four million of us (though estimates say the real total is probably more than twelve million)? No one suspected the saintly Smiths of anything nefarious but when Helen learns what he has done she takes to following Ash and his police minder, DS Rosalind Franklin, around the country. She wants to tear Smith limb from limb.

The Coffin Maker has a secret garden that’s been exposed as the North Sea erodes the cliffs around his condemned house. Human bones reveal a serial killer even as they fall into the water destroying evidence. Where did Gordon Smith disappear to and how will his victims be identified? The Coffin Maker's Garden by Stuart MacBride sees the welcome return of Ash Henderson and his motley crew 7 long years since their previous outing in A Song For The Dying.There's murder, mystery, fabulous characters and dark humour that had me laughing out loud throughout. So, despite it's dark subject matter, it's just so well balanced with humour. Logan McRae is the everyman, a decent guy trying to do good in a world that is both cruel and absurd. When he does break the rules, it’s for the greater good. Ash Henderson is a very different character, a vigilante fuelled by a need for revenge, constrained only by what he can get away with. While the humour is there, the overall feel is bleaker. And so to UNIVERSITY, far too young, naive and stupid to be away from the family home, sharing a subterranean flat in one of the seedier bits of Edinburgh with a mad Irishman, and four other bizarre individuals. The highlight of walking to the art school in the mornings (yes: we were students, but we still did mornings) was trying not to tread in the fresh bloodstains outside our front door, and dodging the undercover CID officers trying to buy drugs. Lovely place. With the storm still raging, it’s too dangerous to retrieve the bodies and waves are devouring the evidence. Which means no one knows how many people Smith’s already killed and how many more he’ll kill if he can’t be found and stopped.