The Long Straight
(2026)(The sixth book in the DI Cat MacNeil Hebridean Mysteries series)
A novel by Phillip Strang
A dead man. A closed file. And a widow who will not change a word.
On a wet Tuesday in November, on the north end of Benbecula, a crofter is found hanging in his own byre. Beside him is a note that says only I'm sorry. Three weeks earlier a boy on a bicycle was killed on the long straight and left in a ditch, and the island has its answer at last.
DI Cat MacNeil closes both files. She gives a grieving mother the name she has waited for. She stands at the graveside with the whole north end. And then, alone at her desk, she reads one line in a collision report that nobody was meant to read twice — and it says the pickup was going the wrong way.
Because a man with beasts is in his bed at two in the morning. Unless he has somewhere to be.
Nobody has reported Craig Dalziel missing. Why would they? Everyone knows he walked out on the crofter's daughter the same week — the way he had before, the way men like him do. Everyone can tell Cat where he went. Only his dog disagrees: it sits at the bus shelter every evening, waiting for the last bus.
What Cat uncovers will break a closed case wide open, turn an island's verdict on its head, and lead her, in the end, to a kitchen table she has sat at twice before, and a woman who pours the tea before she is asked.
The Long Straight is the sixth DI Cat MacNeil Hebridean mystery: a slow-burn crime novel of islands, families and the things done for love without asking. Like the others in the series, it can be read entirely on its own.
Genre: Mystery
On a wet Tuesday in November, on the north end of Benbecula, a crofter is found hanging in his own byre. Beside him is a note that says only I'm sorry. Three weeks earlier a boy on a bicycle was killed on the long straight and left in a ditch, and the island has its answer at last.
DI Cat MacNeil closes both files. She gives a grieving mother the name she has waited for. She stands at the graveside with the whole north end. And then, alone at her desk, she reads one line in a collision report that nobody was meant to read twice — and it says the pickup was going the wrong way.
Because a man with beasts is in his bed at two in the morning. Unless he has somewhere to be.
Nobody has reported Craig Dalziel missing. Why would they? Everyone knows he walked out on the crofter's daughter the same week — the way he had before, the way men like him do. Everyone can tell Cat where he went. Only his dog disagrees: it sits at the bus shelter every evening, waiting for the last bus.
What Cat uncovers will break a closed case wide open, turn an island's verdict on its head, and lead her, in the end, to a kitchen table she has sat at twice before, and a woman who pours the tea before she is asked.
The Long Straight is the sixth DI Cat MacNeil Hebridean mystery: a slow-burn crime novel of islands, families and the things done for love without asking. Like the others in the series, it can be read entirely on its own.
Genre: Mystery
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