There’s been a wee rash of press coverage for The Dead Beat prior to publication. Here it all is in one handy place:

Here’s a thing I wrote for Crime Time all about death, BIG BLACK DEATH STALKING ME.

I answered some very astute questions over at Female First, all about my feisty female protagonist and all that guff. Enjoy!

I wrote a big old feature for The Herald about writing The Dead Beat. Turned out it was a double-paged spread and the front cover of the Arts supplement. Nice. Anyway, here it is. I mention AL Kennedy and a whole bunch of other shit.

As a sidebar for that Herald thing, I WROTE MY OWN OBITUARY. Here it is. It was both funny and weird to write.

Upcoming4.me reviewed The Dead Beat and loved it, winding up the review by saying: ‘It is an excellent Edinburgh novel and is, just like grunge, fast and dirty.’

An awesome review by Shari Low in The Daily Record which ends: “Riveting. Fearless. Twisted. If Tartan Noir was a family with an irreverent rebel child, his name would be Doug Johnstone.” 

A lovely four-star review over at Library Thing by ‘Atticus Finch’, who loved all the music stuff and thought the mental health issues were handled well. Ta!

I was interviewed by the Edinburgh Evening News, where I talked about Kurt Cobain, feeling old and my obsession with obituaries. Read all about it here.

Three weeks before publication we had the first review of The Dead Beat, by Bethany Anderson over at Subtle Melodrama. And it’s a cracker, Ms Anderson describing it as ‘funny, moving, exciting and, as always, Johnstone really brings the city of Edinburgh alive’. Cheers, Bethany!