Truth Lies Bleeding

Tony Black moves away from the noir of his Gus Dury novels with this terrific police procedural featuring Detective Inspector Rob Brennan, just back from psychiatric leave and on a mission.

An accomplished and impressive piece of tartan noir

Black's visceral prose makes this a superior offering in a crowded market

Every flaw is stripped of shadow and every bad deed gets punished. If I read a better example of the police procedural this year I will be amazed

Tony Black is an award-winning journalist who has written for most of the national newspapers. He is the author of Paying for It, Gutted, Loss and Long Time Dead. For more information visit www.tonyblack.net.

Four teenagers find the mutilated corpse of a young girl stuffed into a dumpster in an Edinburgh alleyway. Who is she? Where did she come from? Who killed her and why? Above all, where is the baby to which she has obviously recently given birth? Inspector Rob Brennan, recently back from psychiatric leave, is still shocked by the senseless shooting of his only brother. His superiors think that the case of the dumpster girl will be perfect to get him back on track. But Rob Brennan has enemies within the force, stacks of unfinished business and a nose for trouble. What he discovers about the murdered girl blows the case - and his life - wide open.

Long Time Dead

Gus Dury is back on the skids, but even worse is the murder case which his best friend needs help with.

Ripping, gutsy prose and a witty wreck of a protagonist makes this another exceptionally compelling, bright and even original thriller from a writer yet to explode

If you've yet to discover the hardcore brilliance of Gus Drury, pour yourself a large one and start here

From the word go, the no-nonsense cynicism of Dury is back and in full throttle ... Dury has the potential to be a long-running success story of Tartan Noir

A dark, personal journey with convincingly raw emotions and a protagonist who is digging beyond rock bottom

Tony Black is an award-winning journalist, who has written for most of the national newspapers. He is the author of Paying for It, Gutted and Loss. 
 
www.tonyblack.net

Gus Dury is back on the drink. While in hospital after a hit-and-run accident, his best friend, Hod, asks him to investigate the ritual, on-campus hanging of an Edinburgh University student. The murder victim's mother is a high-profile actress, who has promised a big-money reward. Gus, desperate for money, goes undercover at the university, taking a janitor's job, and soon uncovers a similar ritualistic hanging which took place in the 70s. Few of the students are prepared to talk about it - until another one of their group turns up dead by the same method. But Gus now moves into very dangerous waters as he begins to discover what and who is really behind it all - and he becomes the next target for the executioner.

Loss

Gus Dury returns with his darkest and most personal case yet

If you're a fan of the Ian Rankins, Denise Minas and Irvine Welshes of this world, this is most certainly one for you.

The enigmatic Dury continues to be the punk rocker of the Scottish crime scene - anarchic, rebellious and never afraid to shove his Doc Martens where they're not wanted.

Tony Black delivers a story with a hard edge and fast moving action. In this third book, he yet again produces a story that never lets up and delivers a superb book that you just can't put down. I can't wait for the next instalment of Gus Dury.

Tony Black is one of those excellent perpetrators of Scottish noir ... [he] is a compelling and convincing portrayer of raw emotions in a vicious milieu.

Black's book is the most personal one yet.

A brilliant, sweeping and heartbreaking novel, Black truly deserves your attention.

As washed-up private detectives go, Gus Dury is compelling - he's as hard as any criminal and twice as self-destructive.

Tony Black has written two of the finest crime novels to come out of the UK in the past twenty years and I'm willing to bet that in twenty years, Paying for It and Gutted will be on the top ten list of any crime list. But now comes Loss ... Phew-oh ... It's like having yer ass kicked and yer heart shrived simultaneously. What a privilege to watch a master writer achieve everything you'd hoped for and then some.

This is modern crime at its most brutal, its most affecting, its most honest and its most intelligent.

Tony Black's third novel Loss is another bleak investigation for his poignant Edinburgh washed up journalist turned involuntary private investigator Gus Dury. Black writes about urban blight and the curse of alcohol like no other, but his down at heel tales are also full of everyday humour. Harrowing but indispensable.

Tony Black is my favourite British crime writer and Gus Dury the genre's most interesting protagonist. Like his previous books, Loss has the power, style and street swagger that makes most of his contemporaries a little bland by comparison.

Most of the fiction books about Edinburgh are geared for the tourist but this is actually geared for the punter ... It really evokes the place ... In Gus Dury you have a very Edinburgh character. If Trainspotting's Begbie's younger brother had gone to university and become a journalist he might have been something like Gus Dury.

Tony Black is an award-winning journalist who has written for most of the national newspapers. He is the author of Paying for It and Gutted. He lives in Edinburgh. 
 
www.tonyblack.net

Gus Dury is a changed man. He is off the Edinburgh streets and back with estranged wife, Debs. He has promised her that he won't get involved in any more dodgy cases which the police can't or won't solve. And above all, he's off the drink. In his pocket at all times is a half bottle of Scotch, but although the label is worn to shreds, he has never so much as loosened the cap. 
 
Then his brother Michael is found dead with a bullet in his heart and Gus' life begins to unravel all over again. How can he keep the promises he has made and still avenge his brother's murder? 
 
Loss, Tony Black's third novel about washed-up hack turned private investigator Gus Dury, is absolutely gripping - a labyrinth of violence, secrets and emotion. A true rollercoaster of a read.

Gutted

The blistering follow-up to Paying For It from Scotland's brightest new crime talent, now in paperback

Only two books in and Tony Black is already one of my favourite living crime writers.  Gutted is simply superb

Tony Black is the latest of the seemingly unending stream of good Scottish crime writers who have in common the ability to portray vividly the underbelly of Scottish inner-city criminality ... The dialogue fizzes and the whole is suffused with black humour. Celtic Noir is in rude health

Sitting somewhere between the raw grit of Welsh and the genius of Rankin, Gutted deserves to be the thriller hit of the summer

As washed-up private detectives go, Gus Dury is compelling - he's as hard as any criminal, as twice as self-destructive.

Absolutely gripping - a labyrinth of violence, secrets and emotion. This is a true rollercoaster of a read.

Tony Black is an award-winning journalist who has written for most of the national newspapers. He is the author of Paying For It. He lives in Edinburgh

When the gangland owner of a pit bull that killed a three-year-old girl is found gutted on an Edinburgh hill Gus Dury is asked to investigate, and soon finds himself up to his neck in the warring underworld of the city's sink estates. Amidst illegal dog fights, a missing fifty grand and a police force and judiciary desperate to cover their links to a brutal killing, Gus must work fast to root out the truth, whilst the case sinks its teeth ever deeper into him.

Paying For It

A brilliant thriller debut from Edinburgh journalist turned rising crime-writing star Tony Black, introducing Gus Dury, a compelling new hero in the great tradition of Scottish detective fiction.

Tony Black's first novel hits the ground running, combining a sympathetic ear for the surreal dialogue of the dispossessed with a portrait of the belly of a city painted in the blackest of humour

Paying For It might just be the most aptly titled novel of the year. Rarely has a title worked on so many levels... the narrative blasts off the page like a triple malt... This is one adrenalin-pumped novel, as moving and compassionate as it is stylishly written

Assuming (and hoping) that this is the first of many featuring the tortured Gus Dury, we've never seen a series character so richly and honestly drawn from the get-go. The emotional punches connect solidly in Paying For It, as the pains of being a father and the pains of being a son are laid bare. The debut of the year

Of all the new writers emerging this year, he is the one to watch

Martyn Waites, author of the Joe Donovan series

Tony Black makes an amazing debut with this book, a dark and emotional piece of work ... [he] has managed in his first book to show a maturity in his writing that some authors chase for years. I'd put him up there with Rankin and Kernick and Billingham with just this first novel. I can't wait for more

Tony Black is already one of my favourite living crime writers

Tony Black lives in Edinburgh. An award-winning journalist, he has written for most of the UK national newspapers. He is currently writing his second Gus Dury novel, Gutted.

Gus Dury once had a high-flying career as a journalist and a wife he adored. But now he is living on the edge, a drink away from Edinburgh's down-and-outs, drifting from bar to bar, trying not to sign divorce papers. But the road takes an unexpected turn when a friend asks him to investigate the brutal torture and killing of his son, and Gus becomes embroiled in a much bigger story of political corruption and illegal people-trafficking. Seedy doss-houses, bleak wastelands and sudden violence contrast with the cobbled streets and cool bistros of fashionable Edinburgh, as the puzzle unravels to a truly shocking ending.

Tony Black

Tony Black’s Edinburgh makes Ian Rankin’s version of the city seem sedate, polite and carefree … makes a strong case to assume the mantle of Edinburgh’s leading fictional detective, vacant since the retirement of Rankin’s Rebus

Comparisons with Rebus will be obvious. But that would be too easy ... Black has put his defiant, kick-ass stamp on his leading man, creating a character that deftly carries the story through every razor-sharp twist and harrowing turn. DI Rob Brennan is my new star on the capital's murder mile. And you can't help but think Rebus would approve

Murder Mile is the second outing for DI Rob Brennan, a complex and brooding character who makes Rebus look positively chipper by comparison ... With Murder Mile Tony Black has put the heart back into the serial killer novel. It’s dark, yes, and deeply unpleasant in places, as it should be, but he hasn’t played to shock and there’s a refreshing lack of cheap gore. Rob Brennan is the perfect guide to follow through the criminal underworld, a bundle of rage and righteousness, and after reading Murder Mile the next fictional DI you come across will have a lot to live up to

Brennan’s Edinburgh roils and seethes with violence

In a cold, windswept field on the outskirts of Edinburgh, lies the brutally mutilated body of a young woman. As DI Rob Brennan looks at the tangled mass of limbs and blood, he feels his heart freeze. 
 
Like Fiona Gow five years earlier, this girl has been strangled with her own stockings, sexually mutilated and her eyes have been gouged out. Is this the work of an Edinburgh Ripper? The press certainly think so. 
 
Rob Brennan is determined to uncover the truth - however painful that might be. But truth is hard to come by in a world of police rivalries, media hysteria and copycat crime.

Tony Black

Praise for Murder Mile

Tony Black’s Edinburgh makes Ian Rankin’s version of the city seem sedate, polite and carefree … makes a strong case to assume the mantle of Edinburgh’s leading fictional detective, vacant since the retirement of Ra ...

Comparisons with Rebus will be obvious. But that would be too easy ... Black has put his defiant, kick-ass stamp on his leading man, creating a character that deftly carries the story through every razor-sharp twist ...

Murder Mile is the second outing for DI Rob Brennan, a complex and brooding character who makes Rebus look positively chipper by comparison ... With Murder Mile Tony Black has put the heart back into the seri ...

Tony Black’s Edinburgh makes Ian Rankin’s version of the city seem sedate, polite and carefree … makes a strong case to assume the mantle of Edinburgh’s leading fictional detective, vacant since the retirement of Ra ...

Comparisons with Rebus will be obvious. But that would be too easy ... Black has put his defiant, kick-ass stamp on his leading man, creating a character that deftly carries the story through every razor-sharp twist ...

Murder Mile is the second outing for DI Rob Brennan, a complex and brooding character who makes Rebus look positively chipper by comparison ... With Murder Mile Tony Black has put the heart back into the seri ...

Tony Black’s Edinburgh makes Ian Rankin’s version of the city seem sedate, polite and carefree … makes a strong case to assume the mantle of Edinburgh’s leading fictional detective, vacant since the retirement of Ra ...

Comparisons with Rebus will be obvious. But that would be too easy ... Black has put his defiant, kick-ass stamp on his leading man, creating a character that deftly carries the story through every razor-sharp twist ...

Murder Mile is the second outing for DI Rob Brennan, a complex and brooding character who makes Rebus look positively chipper by comparison ... With Murder Mile Tony Black has put the heart back into the seri ...

Books by Tony Black

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