Shadow Man

Elspeth, Meggy and Xavier are held in a flat they cannot leave, by a man they know only as the shadow man. They do not know where they are, why they were taken, or what he wants — only that he is patient, and that he does not intend to let them go.

Outside, Dr Constance 'Connie' Woolwine, an American psychological profiler, is brought to Edinburgh at the request of a wealthy family whose daughter-in-law has vanished. Paired with DI Brodie Baarda, a kidnapping specialist on loan from London, she quickly works out that the missing woman is not the only one — and that the man they are hunting is driven by a delusion that makes ordinary motive useless.

A standalone crime thriller separate from Fields's Callanach series, alternating between the captives' point of view and the investigation, with a killer whose pathology — the conviction that he is already dead — is the engine of the book.