A Bad, Bad Place

Shortlisted for the 2026 McDermid Debut Award

A dazzling debut mystery about a young girl and her grandmother grappling with the fallout of an unexplained murder in 1979 Glasgow

If it hadn’t been for her wee stupid dog Sid Vicious, 12-year-old Janey Devine might never have stumbled upon the corpse of Samantha Watson. And then maybe she’d still be able to sleep at night. And maybe her nana wouldn’t be so worried sick all the time. And maybe Billy “The Ghost” Watson, a notorious gangster, wouldn’t be on her tail—for it’s Billy’s daughter who was left for dead on those train tracks, and now Billy wants answers.

Fear and gossip spread through the tight-knit community of Possilpark, Glasgow, and while Janey swears she can’t remember the details of that morning, the cops think she’s hiding something—and indeed, there’s something she knows that she’s not quite ready to tell anyone else, not even her nana, who won’t rest until this whole thing is behind them.

Shot through with remarkable humor and voice, Frances Crawford’s stunning debut is a coming-of-age whodunnit, an intimate portrait of a working-class neighborhood that weaves Janey’s innocent candor and her nana’s hard-earned wisdom into a sweeping tale of grief and survival that marks the arrival of a major new voice in crime fiction.