Fault Lines

When volcanologist Surtsey finds her married lover dead, she pockets his phone and makes the fatal decision to keep her discovery secret … but someone has been watching…

‘A cracking and highly original thriller’ Mark Billingham

‘You don’t read Fault Lines so much as you white-knuckle your way through its twists and turns’ Megan Abbott

‘A superb, highly original psychological chiller’ Steve Cavanagh

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In a reimagined contemporary Edinburgh, where a tectonic fault has opened up to produce a new volcano in the Firth of Forth, and where tremors are an everyday occurrence, volcanologist Surtsey makes a shocking discovery.

On a clandestine trip to new volcanic island The Inch, to meet Tom, her lover and her boss, she finds his lifeless body, and makes the fatal decision to keep their affair, and her discovery, a secret.

Desperate to know how he died, but also terrified she’ll be exposed, Surtsey’s life quickly spirals into a nightmare when someone makes contact – someone who claims to know what she’s done…

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‘An explosive thriller’ Daily Record

‘A cracking-good thriller with some seriously good writing and some beautifully designed characters … Here’s a writer pushing the thriller envelope, giving the reader not just a good novel, but also a unique one’ David Pitt, Booklist

‘Novel and elegant … it is the book’s thought-provoking and heart-breaking moments that carry the reader through the story and which resonate most at the end’ Scotsman

‘Both a meditation on the volatility of human nature and a gripping thriller with plenty of twists and turns … An original and addictive thriller, as intelligent as it is shocking’ Foreword Reviews

‘Richly characterised, beautifully crafted, this is a book that you truly inhabit’ Emma Kavanagh

‘Scotland’s truest exponent of noir’ Chris Brookmyre

'A subtly off-kilter speculative thriller that builds to a truly explosive ending’ Eva Dolan

‘A pacey, gripping read’ Louise Voss

‘Sexy, fearless and addictive’ Helen FitzGerald

‘Johnstone weaves his compelling and original tale with great skill and elegance from the gripping beginning to a tense and explosive ending' Amanda Jennings

‘Brilliantly unputdownable’ Martyn Waites

‘Superb’ Luca Veste

‘Blending powerful imagination and plotting, this is the work of a writer at the top of his game’ Stuart Neville

‘Plays with every single emotion’ Susi Holliday

‘This had me hooked from the first page’ Cass Green

‘Poignant, gripping and packed with seismic shocks’ Paddy Magrane

‘Incisive, intelligent and imaginative’ Michael J. Malone

‘I was completely swept away’ Caroline Mitchell

‘Hits you lie a seismic shock’ Douglas Skelton

‘Grabs you by the throat in the first chapter’ Neil Broadfoot