Rob Marshall
DI Rob Marshall Scottish Borders
Meet Rob Marshall, a DI who formerly trained as a criminal profiler. Frustrated with the passivity of profiling, he joined the police to solve crimes and act directly.
After an investigation goes awry, Marshall is sidelined. He must return to his hometown of Melrose in the Scottish Borders to solve the case that broke him. And maybe find closure on his tragic past.
The DI Rob Marshall Mysteries are police procedurals set in the Scottish Borders and nearby locations, starring a haunted detective masking his trauma with biting humour.
Current status: Books 1–10 are out now. Book 11, Dead on the Vine, is out on 7 March 2027. Corvus is publishing new paperback editions of books 1–4 through 2027.
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The Serial Killer he couldn’t catch is dead…
Can DI Rob Marshall save his last victim before she dies too?
Met cop DI Rob Marshall is hot on the trail of the serial killer known as the Chameleon, who has abducted, tortured and killed a series of young women in north-west London. As they close in, the Chameleon – who switches identity to get close to his victims – shoots Marshall’s partner and escapes.
But when the Chameleon’s body is found two years later, Marshall must return to his home town of Melrose in the Scottish Borders and face the tragedy that’s haunted him for twenty years, which made him leave in the first place.
The Chameleon’s final victim is still missing – can Marshall unpick the Chameleon’s latest identity in time to save her from a lonely death?
A serial killer’s secret grave. Another murderer’s victims.
The case that broke Rob Marshall crashes back into his life. Ten years ago, Marshall profiled a serial killer the press had dubbed the Shadow Man, who killed six young athletes at remote sites in cold blood, and he worked with Northumbria Police to catch the perpetrator. But the Shadow Man kept the burial locations of the final three bodies to himself. Tired of the passivity, Marshall quit profiling and joined the police.
Now a Detective Inspector in Police Scotland’s Borders Major Investigation Team, Marshall is summoned to HMP Frankland in County Durham, AKA The Monster Mansion. The Shadow Man promises to show them where one body lies, allowing a family to finally grieve. But he will only show Marshall.
At a lonely woods on the banks of the Tweed, the Shadow Man leads them to where the body lies. But they find another three, freshly killed. Victims the Shadow Man couldn’t have murdered, with a vastly different MO. Is it a copycat? A collaborator? Or someone else entirely?
As Marshall and team scour the Borders and the north of England, desperately trying to identify the victims and track down the killer, it becomes clear someone else has been abducted and will suffer the same brutal fate. Can Marshall unpick the trail in time to save them?
The merciless snow of the Scottish Borders. A case that freezes the blood.
Accustomed to the bustle of London, DI Rob Marshall finds himself confronted with the unforgiving Scottish winters he had long left behind. A gruesome discovery off the high road between Stow and Lauder sends shivers down his spine – a man and a woman, both frozen to death with their wrists and ankles bound. Left to suffer by someone with a sinister motive, or simply victims of the treacherous snowstorm?
As an expert in tracking serial offenders, Marshall is unprepared for a case with no leads, pushing him to rely on old-fashioned detective work, police experience he never gained as a direct entry. Desperate to find answers, he begins to see connections – but are they real or simply a trick of his trained instincts?
Marshall delves into the society of his childhood, coming face-to-face with bitter enemies and unearthing memories he thought he’d escaped when he left the Borders. But as the shadows of his past creep closer, they threaten to turn his world upside down – and prove fatal.
The shadows are deep… And the door is closing.
In the heart of the Scottish Borders, Gary Hislop is expanding his criminal empire and his lethal grasp is tightening around the area. But as he opens his Kelso hardware store one morning, a sudden attack on him sets off a chain of events that even he couldn’t predict.
Enter DI Rob Marshall and his team. As Marshall delves into the incident, he finds himself ensnared in a web of deceit, where every alliance is suspect and every door casts a long shadow. The organization protecting Hislop is impenetrable and, within Marshall’s own ranks, trust is a rare commodity.
Familiar faces may conceal dark secrets and newcomers to the team might be driven by agendas of their own. As the case unfolds, the question becomes not only who attacked Hislop, but who inside Marshall’s own team is leaking vital information to the underworld? With time running out, can Marshall rally his team to uncover the truth? Will he unearth the betrayal within and bring the guilty to justice?
The chase is on – and time is running out…
Holly Fenwick thought she had left her nightmare behind.
Twelve years ago, she narrowly escaped the clutches of a brutal serial killer.
Now, while she films a documentary in Eyemouth in the Scottish Borders, to recover from her ordeal and rebuild her life, she spots a figure eerily similar to her former captor. She rushes in, only to find no trace of the man but a chaotic crime scene – and a missing woman.
Before he was a cop, DI Rob Marshall worked as a criminal profiler on Holly’s case. Now based over the border in Scotland in the new Behavioural Sciences Unit in Gartcosh, Marshall joins the investigation on his old patch, but all he has are questions.
Was Holly’s return to the crime scene a mere coincidence? Is her story the figment of a traumatised mind? As the investigation unfolds, Holly is forced to confront her deepest fears and the possibility that the killer has marked her as his next target. And Marshall must consider the possibility his absolute truth might not be so certain.
Walk the darkest path…
Having worked at Gartcosh near Glasgow for over a year now, DI Rob Marshall has never felt further from his home in the Scottish Borders, not even when he worked for the Met in London.
Focusing more on criminal profiling than actual police work, Marshall’s questioning why he signed up to remain in the police. Still, the work is stimulating, especially a case where bodies have been found in disused railway tunnels across Scotland. No matter how hard he digs, Marshall can’t fathom a motive, let alone a single suspect.
But when a further body turns up in Neidpath tunnel near Peebles, Marshall is drawn back to the Borders, where he must work with his old team and their new boss, DCI Ryan Gashkori. Can he figure out if the victim is connected and maybe catch a serial killer with no seeming motive?
A murdered teenager. A town on edge. A case Marshall has seen before.
Acting DCI Rob Marshall is back in the Borders with a permanent promotion dangled in front of him – and a new boss eyeing cuts to his Major Investigation Team.
When a seventeen-year-old boy is found murdered in Hawick, a straightforward case starts to unravel. The details echo another investigation, and the secrets Marshall uncovers have been hiding in plain sight.
Is he hunting a copycat, or chasing shadows? With his team’s future on the line, Marshall has to separate the truth from deadly misdirection.
A cold case. A guilty conscience. A killer still at large.
When campaigner Heather McGill forces Police Scotland to reopen the murder of a local sex worker at Scott’s View, a beauty spot in the Scottish Borders, she sets off a chain reaction that threatens decades of secrets.
DCI Rob Marshall inherits the crime his predecessors failed to solve – and the evidence leads back to the teenagers who found the body, grown up now with lives of their own.
Meanwhile, Duncan Brown has come home from Canada to care for his ailing mother. Is he hiding a terrible secret?
As guilt, obsession and long-buried truths collide, someone will do anything to keep the past from coming to light.
Two murders. Two cities. One killer.
During the Edinburgh Festival, a phone call lures DCI Rob Marshall to Duddingston Loch, where he watches a woman drown.
At the same moment, hundreds of miles south, Met DI Sam Winter takes the same call – and can’t save a man burning to death near the Notting Hill Carnival.
Someone is choreographing death in two cities at once, testing both detectives and forcing them to see what links the victims – and themselves. When the calls turn personal, Marshall realises the next name on the list might be one of their own.
Cuts Both Ways is where Marshall and DI Sam Winter cross paths. Her own series starts with No Cure For Regret.
A young woman. A bath full of chlorine. A killer who almost left no trace.
When twenty-year-old Brooke Trotter is found dead in her family home in Jedburgh, DCI Rob Marshall finds a crime scene that has been methodically erased. No prints. No DNA. No obvious motive. Just a student who worked at the local museum, a town full of festival strangers, and a killer who understood forensics well enough to all but disappear.
Brooke’s life leads Marshall far beyond the Borders – into a darkness he never saw coming.
Connor Dyer makes YouTube videos about Borders history. He’s charming on camera and methodical off it – and he’s watching his stepsister, Janie. While Marshall works the case from the outside in, Connor moves through the same towns and festivals, hiding in plain sight and running out of reasons to wait.
How far will a man go to silence the person he should have protected most?