Hue & Cry
03 July 09

Crail-based mother of two, Shirley McKay, has made it to the number one slot in Waterstone's Bestseller charts within the first week of publication of her debut novel, Hue & Cry. The book, published by Edinburgh publisher Polygon (an imprint of Birlinn Ltd), sold more than 120 copies in the first few days after publication in the St Andrews branch of Waterstone's  alone.

With this confident and inspiring debut novel, set in 1579, St. Andrews, Shirley has created the first in a historical crime series, all to feature Hew Cullan, a young lawyer recently returned home from Paris.
In Hue & Cry, a thirteen-year old boy meets his death on the streets of the university city of St. Andrews and suspicion falls upon one of the regents at the university, Nicholas Colp. Hew Cullan uncovers a complex tale of passion and duplicity, of sexual desire and tension within the repressive atmosphere of the Protestant Kirk and the austerity of the academic cloister.

“McKay reveals a macabre imagination, one that  does not flinch from describing the grisly  or the gruesome... She has pulled off her first novel with great credit”  Rosemary Goring

Shirley was born in Tynemouth but now lives with her family in Crail, Fife. At the age of fifteen she won the Young Observer playwriting competition, her play being performed at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs. She went on to study English and Linguistics at the University of St Andrews before attending Durham University for postgraduate study in Romantic and seventeenth century prose. She was shortlisted for the CWA Debut Dagger and currently works as a freelance proofreader.

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