John Dean – Crime Writer

It’s always exciting when a new crime fiction event is added to the calendar, particularly when it is in Scotland, where I live. So welcome to the Heart of Stone Crimewriting Festival being held in the old fishing town of Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire, on May 29-30.

In its pilot year of 2026, the spotlight will fall on local writers as well as bestselling authors from further afield, with a series of talks, events and book signings.

Among those due to appear are award-winning novelist Nina Allan, listed by The Guardian in their list of 50 Writers You Should Read Now in 2018, Arbroath writer Julie Adams, who writes crime and mystery novels set across the Scottish Highlands, Tariq Ashkanani, who won the McIlvanney Prize for Scottish Crime Book of the Year 2025 with his novel The Midnight King, Rachel Bremner, who writes Scottish crime fiction set in Stonehaven, Lexie Conyngham, a historian based in north-east Scotland whose historical crime novels draw on a life spent among Scotland’s old cities, ancient universities and hidden aristocratic estates, Nancy Jardine, who writes mystery thrillers, and Chris Longmuir, the winner of the Dundee International Book Prize for her debut novel Dead Wood, the first in her Dundee Crime Series.

You can find out more at www.heartofstone festival.com