Final book of the Grace den Herder trilogy out today

The kindle edition of former Lothian and Borders’ detective Peter Ritchie’s latest book, ‘Red Sky in the Morning’ is now available to buy.

Once again, Peter draws on his extensive police career which took him from East Lothian to Edinburgh via London and the Hague, to create believable characters and an exciting plot which will appeal to all crime fiction fans.

‘Red Sky in the Morning’ is the final part of the Grace den Herder trilogy where she faces one of her hardest tests against a brutal criminal devoid of pity who will stop at nothing to protect what he has built up over the years and refuses to let go.

In this book, the detective returns to her force unsure of her future or whether she is strong enough to carry on with a role in serious crime investigation. She is asked to take over an enquiry that will test her to the limit and struggles with the subsequent events that threaten to run out of control.

An undercover officer is missing and a young woman is washed up barely alive on the Berwickshire coast. Her story is of witnessing horror on the waters of the North Sea and her subsequent ordeal to survive the trauma that turns her world into a series of nightmares driving her to the edge of madness.

The story is complex web involving trafficked women from Eastern Europe and alliance of ruthless criminals from Newcastle, Glasgow and Edinburgh. At the head of this corporation is Pete Handyside a dangerous career criminal brought up on the streets of North Shields who controls organised crime in the North East of England. He realises that his team have been infiltrated and sets of a train of events where some of the most cold-blooded criminals in the North East of England and Central Scotland turn on each other in an attempt to clean the trail of evidence leading to them.

Den Herder pits herself against Handyside leading to a chain of events complicated by high level corruption somewhere in police service. Her decisions could cost the life of an innocent girl and leads her to a life or death situation on the shores of Loch Melfort in Argyll and among the rolling Perthshire hills.

The other two books, ‘Noble Cause’ and ‘The Shortest Day of the Year’ have both been widely praised and sales continue to be good.

Earlier today Peter took time out from his hectic schedule to speak to the Edinburgh Reporter about ‘Red Sky.’ He said: “The response to the books has been better than I could ever have imagined when I started writing the first pages of Noble Cause. It’s given me so much to think about and enjoy over the last couple of years. There’s no doubt that you learn during the process so I feel my writing has improved with the hours labouring over the keyboard and feel confident enough to carry on in the future.”

So what does the future hold now that the trilogy has been completed: “I really want to see what the response is to the third part of the trilogy but I have started on another manuscript. Apart from that I also want to fulfil an ambition of mine to put out a book of poems I’ve written over the years never quite gotten round to publishing. That should be easy enough as they’re already written and just need to be compiled. They’re very much about working life and things I’ve witnessed myself. However the next book will still be about crime!”

Photograph by JC Mackintosh.