The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – This House of Burning Bones by Stuart MacBride

Episode Date: April 25, 2025

This House of Burning Bones by Stuart MacBride Stuartmacbride.com The Granite City is ready to burn, and all it takes is a single spark… In the heat of a blistering summer, Aberdeen’s police are struggling: half the force is off sick, all leave has been cancelled, someone’s firebombed a hotel full of migrants, and there’s a massive protest march happening this Saturday. With officers dropping like flies, Detective Inspector Logan McRae is forced to juggle cases and run a major murder investigation with a skeleton staff of misfits, idiots and malingerers until the top brass can arrange back-up from other divisions. It doesn’t help that the Aberdeen Examiner has just been bought by Natasha Agapova, a tabloid media tycoon, hell-bent on blaming local police for everything. And she’s more than happy to fan the flames. But, as bad as everything seems, it’s all about to get much, much worse . . . * * *About the author Stuart MacBride is the Sunday Times No.1 bestselling author of the Logan McRae and Ash Henderson novels. He’s also published standalones, novellas, short stories, and a slightly twisted children’s picture book for slightly twisted children. Stuart lives in the wilds of northeast Scotland with his wife Fiona; cats Gherkin, Onion, and Beetroot; some hens; some horses; and an impressive collection of assorted weeds.

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Chris Foss 1 on the TikTok, and Chris Foss, Facebook.com. Today we have the amazing author on the show, Stuart McBride joins us. His newest offering is coming out July 22nd, 2025. It is entitled, This House of Burning Bones, which is the Chris Fosho on Fridays. Anyway, we're going to be getting into it with him, talking about his extensive writing and library and books that he's done and everything else. Stuart McBride is the Sunday Times number one author of the Logan McCrae and Ash Henderson novels. He's also published standalone novellas, short stories, and slightly twisted children's picture book for slightly twisted children.

He lives in the wilds of Northeast Scotland with his wife Fiona, cats Gherkin, onion and beetroot and some hens, some horses and an impressive collection of assorted weeds. Welcome to the show Stuart. How are you? I'm fine Chris. How are you doing? You're looking, you're looking fine and sexy today. Oh, thank you. So are you as you intro to what you came on the podcast. I like your paws, they're full of that stuff. You know, I'm not used to married guys hitting on me. So, so Stuart, give us a dot coms. Where do you want people to find you on the interwebs?

You can find me at, surprisingly enough, www.stuartmcbride.com. I don't tweet. There is a Facebook page, but I don't Facebook. So, I occasionally sub stack at Stuart McBride as well, but mostly I write books. And you've written quite a few. How many have you written so far? Oh, God. I would have to actually count it up on the inside of a book, but it's 20 years I've been doing this now.

So probably around about 24, 25 books. Congratulations. That's awesome, man. That's quite a run. I look far too young for that to be the case. That's quite a run. I look far too young for that to be the case. You do. You do. You look far too young. I mean, just, you just, you look like you're in your teens at this point. I... This is all shellac. Shellac? Yeah. The makeup artist puts it on you before each show. Make them look older so that, you

know, I think, didn't they do that with you know, some, you know, those child stars that do TV shows, they, some of them, they look old, they look older than they are. Yeah. So your new book that you have coming out, this House of Burning Bones. Or here we go the other way. Ah, so with your new book, this House of Burning Bones, give us a 30,000 overview of it. Ah, so with your new book, this House of Burning Bones, give us a 30,000 overview of it. I've been getting really, really angry. One of the reasons I came off social media was just how absolutely awful the world was

getting. And this was like three years ago. So of course everything has improved dramatically since then. Oh, is this January of 2025? Yeah. And it was, oh, but it was, it was particularly the way that the right wing media in the UK will do its damnedest to stir up as much as it can in terms

of everybody must hate immigrants. Everybody must hate brown people. Everybody must eat trans people. Oh, people, they're sketchy, can't trust them either. And then when something horrible happens, like we had race riots in the UK last year, they all go, oh, what a terrible thing to happen. How could this possibly have occurred? Yeah, it's amazing. You pour petrol on the fire for weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks and then you start hurling lit fireworks at it. And then you're surprised when something goes bang. Yeah.

And that was really sort of the cornerstone for the book that I wanted to write. And this actually predated the riots in the UK, which was really, really, you know how it's lovely if you're sort of, you're just ahead of the curve? And I was two days away from finishing the book when we had the race riots that I had actually written about. Oh, wow. As a speculative thing. And they set fire to a hostel that was housing migrants. Oh, wow. As a speculative thing. And they set fire to a hostel that was housing migrants. Oh, wow.

And that's what happens just before my book starts. Really? So if I'd been six months in advance, everybody would have gone, oh, he can see in the future. The future? Yeah. Because it was two days before I'd finished writing the book. It just looks like I'm jumping

the bandwagon. Wow. So did you decide to change the, what were you adding in the book or? Oh, hell no. Oh, hell no. I said it's like 154,000 words. I'm not going back and changing all those. I'm just going to leave it. So give us a premise of the book and what's inside, the House of Burning Bones, you know, that evokes a little bit of terror just in the title. Paul Fawkes It's set at the height of a really blistering Scottish summer, which we never used to get, but are now becoming really far more prevalent,

and nothing compared to what you guys get. I mean, if a Scottish person hits 22 degrees, they melt. We don't do 40s and 50s over eating. But we have this pressure cooker of heat and dryness. We have the migrant hostel that's just been burned down two days before the book opens. So there's this to investigate whilst at the same time the local newspaper, the Aberdeen Examiner, has just been bought over by a really quite predatory tabloid media mogul who is determined to turn the newspaper into this very provocative, shall we say, right-wing publication. And when she goes missing, all manner of hell kicks off.

Oh, wow. You'll laugh, you'll cry, it'll change your life. Wow, that's quite the statement. You'll laugh, you'll cry, we'll change your life. Tells me my first date marriages. Especially if you drop it on yourself because it's quite big and heavy. Oh yeah, or you can use it to wound other people. That sometimes might be good. I don't know.

We would never advise doing that. I didn't. Especially if there's a Republican congressman. Getting into it, was there anything different you approached? You know, you've written a lot of books. Was there a different approach you took to this novel or was it pretty much, you know, on par with what you're normally writing about and the characters you're normally using?

John Lennon This one actually marks the 20th anniversary of my very first book, which was called Dranit. So I have given my protagonist of that series, Logan McCrae, five years off, because I've done so many horrible things to this poor guy. But he's had five years of not being in the book, and time passes in real time in his world. So he's had five years. He's got a kid now.

He's got a lovely relationship. He's all happy. He's settled down. I have not screwed with his life for five whole years. And that is just all about to stop. So coming back to those characters after half a decade was really quite weird because I haven't written about him for a huge period of time. But it was just like a pair of trousers that your wife won't let you wear out of the house

because there's still a bit of go in them, but the knees aren't there anymore and there are maybe thin bits threatening you know revealing shall we say it's like that it's just pulling on this very very comfortable set of characters who I don't actually have to do a vast amount to because as soon as I start I'll stay tough in this scene with DI steel and off they go and they find and they bicker just like they have always fought and bickered. And it's just an automatic thing. I have known these people so well for, for 20 years now, but I can just smoosh them and just let them get on with it. Smoosh them and let them get on with it. It's only you have an interesting relationship maybe with your characters there.

Oh, they hate me. Oh, they absolutely loathe me. I can't imagine. And you know, you always get asked that question, which one of your characters would you like to go and have a pint with in the pub or bar? Yeah. If you like. And it's always, yeah, I would be fine having a drink with any of them. None of them would want to sit down with me after what I have done.

Ah. Because that's their job, you know, they are fictional, they are there to be tortured. They are there to be tortured. So why do you have that tact with your characters and feel like they deserve to be tortured? What's the motivation behind this? This is kind of one of the great things about crime fiction is that we are who we are when we are in extremis. You know, it dates at our lowest points that we are our most true selves. And that's really what crime fiction does. We do not write books

about happy-go-la-la things that happen to nice people in a nice way. We take somebody's life and we destroy it and then we do horrible things and then we write about who they really are. I love your outlook. I think you're the first horror genre author we've had on that has a really masochistic outlook on their characters. Oh, I'm not the masochist, I'm the sadist. on their characters. Oh, I'm not the masochist, I'm the sadist.

Oh, the sadist, yeah, I stand corrected. Where do you usually do your, where do you usually come up with the dark themes and wit and humor? What's an inspiration for that darkness and humor in your storytelling? A lot of it, there are two sides to to it the darkness is usually to do with me being very angry with the world ah I see where it's coming from every day that passes usually comes from trying to make my wife laugh ah there are there are lots of sort of little asides and jokes that everybody will get, but there are definitely chunks in there that only one person on the entire world is going to go,

oh, I get what you did there. I married her 30 years ago. Pete Slauson Oh, you know, it sounds like she brings it. John Larkin Lucky lady, lucky, lucky lady. Pete Slauson It sounds like she brings, like, basically, you know, some levity to your life. So, where you can, where you, you know, some happiness, joy, smiling. Pete Slauson

Cups of tea. Pete Slauson Cups of tea. Yeah, well, that's, that's, that's the most, that's top of the list right there. So tell us about your life. How did you become a writer? When did you know you were a writer and an author? And how did you start out for people that maybe you're thinking about writing? I never, never ever intended to be a writer. It was not on the cards for me at all.

I didn't really do particularly well at English at school. I'd always been a voracious reader and ever since I was a teeny wee boy, I would be the cliché under the duvet with the torch, reading a book when everybody else had gone to bed up to three in the morning, finish something, take it back to the school library the next morning and get another book out. And I always thought that would be me. I would just be a reader and I was very, very happy to be a reader. That was very cool for me.

What was the first reads you? very happy to be a reader. And that was very cool for me. What was the first reads you, it wasn't until I was in my mid 20s. What was the first books that you got inspired by and read? You don't mind me interrupting. The very first, this is, this is the book when I do events, I've often talked about asking this to other people. What was the book that made you a reader? Mm hmm. You must have one Chris.

Has that one book that makes them go, oh, this is so cool. I think it was, I think it was J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. I remember falling in love with that book and reading it over and over again. Yeah. Oh, Alan Dean Foster too. I loved a lot of science fiction. Oh Yeah, I have I have only just discovered that there's a fourth book in the ring world series And I have no not even on my shelves than any other writer. Oh really but for me it was we need the poo We need the Pooh. We Need the Pooh! It's the first book that I can remember reading for myself and then thinking, reading is just, oh this is so cool! It's an entire world that is unlike my world and it's full of magic and all

these characters and then I discovered that every single book is like full of magic and all these characters and and then I discovered that every single book is like that. They've all these wonderful little worlds that you get to explore and get to be with with these fantastical people that you would never meet in real life. And so Winnie the Pooh is the book that sits deep inside me. So much so I don't know if you guys have a show called Mastermind over there? I don't think so. Is it like the, we don't. I mean, we have some sort of variation of it, the same, something different maybe.

We have a show over here called Buck. There's a celebrity version of it, which seemed like really weird why the heck they would want to have me on it. But I went on Celebrity Mastermind and you sit in this black leather chair and this very grumpy old man throws questions at you in an incredibly po-faced manner and you have to get them all right or you're humiliated on national television in front of hundreds of thousands of millions of people. it's a competition. So I when I went on there my specialist subject was the life and works of a a millen. Oh Wow All because of we need the poo all because of winning the thing I've ever done I would really ever do that Didn't go well, huh? Oh, I do not like quizzes. I, the, the trophy is sitting up on the shelf, but it's like, it's like taking an

exam, a moral exam in front of the entire nation. So what, what made you want to do it then? If you hate quizzes, I was told it would be a great idea and I should do it. And I reluctantly agreed and then came to my senses. to do it then if you hate quizzes I was told it would be a great idea and I should do it and I reluctantly agreed and then came to my senses tried to back out and was convinced to do it again and then I bought myself a great big Lego wheel excavator thing as a reward for if I finish it and you can build the thing with Lego and then I reluctantly went down and did the quiz. You know, some things you got to try once. I'm a grown man. Some things you got to try once to see how it goes. This is Alabama. On your new book, now is this a carry? Are

these are characters that have been in previous books that are in the house of burning bones Mostly yeah, yeah, okay. Yeah, Logan McCrae is my he used to be detective sergeant back in the very beginning Because I decided You know when you read crime novels, they always follow the same pattern. You have got the lead character who is a weirdo. And they're all, you know, Sherlock Holmes is just bizarre. He has his violin and his implacable logic and his opium.

And you've got Inspector Morse with his relay-ale and his classic cars and his classical music. And you've got Rebus with his pop music and his rock cars and his classical music and you've got Rebus with his pop music and his rock music and his heavy drinking and you've got, and that's always the way it is. And they always have a normal person that they drag around with them who is the sidekick. Because they are, they are, so the author can explain the plot to the reader. We are meant to be, we, we, he is normal because we are normal. That's the conduit. That's how, that's how we understand. Watson goes, good God, Holmes,

how on earth did you work out that? And the author explains how clever he is. And I thought, wouldn't it be really interesting to do it the other way around? So instead of having the big weirdo central character, I would write my books about the sidekick, the normal person. Everybody that he works with and everyone he works for, they are the big weirdos. And they are, they are the archetypes that you get in detective fiction. So they should be the heroes, but it's not. Pete Slauson Ah. So, as we go out, tell us some people where they can get to know you, get to find out more about the book, website.com, etc., etc.

Richard Bates If you go to StuartMcBride.com, it will be slightly out of date, but hopefully, it will be slightly more up to date in the not too distant. I have recently moved publishers so they are Trying to see just how much they can actually tell about people tell people about me without you know, reaching the Official Secrets Act Oh Chris you've frozen and gone all Dalek. Oh, and it'd all been going so smoothly up till then. Some unstable issues and delays.

Anyway, thank you, Stuart, for coming on the show. We really appreciate it. It's been lovely to talk to you. and delays. Anyway, thank you, Stuart, for coming on the show. We really appreciate it. It's been lovely to talk to you. Thank you. And to wear clothes as well. I don't want to dress this fancy. And thanks, Amon, for tuning in. Go to goodreese.com, Forchess, chrisfoss, linkedin.com, Forchess, chrisfoss. Chrisfoss won the TikTokity and all those crazy places. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time. Thanks, Stuart.