Graeme Macrae Burnet chats to Paul Burke about the concluding volume of the Gorsky trilogy A CASE OF MATRICIDE, Simenon, Zola, small town France & Kilmarnock. 

*Cryptic intro explained - Graeme was on Benbecula because Polygon will publish a new novella by him Benbecula. The next in Polygon’s Darkland Tales series, which sees Scottish authors reimagining key moments from Scottish history, myth and legend.

A CASE OF MATRICIDE: Chief Inspector Gorski returns … In the unremarkable French town of Saint-Louis, a mysterious stranger stalks the streets; an elderly woman believes her son is planning to do away with her; a prominent manufacturer drops dead. Between visits to the town’s hostelries, Chief Inspector Georges Gorski ponders the connections, if any, between these events, while all the time grappling with his own domestic and existential demons.Graeme Macrae Burnet once again pierces the respectable bourgeois façade of small-town life in this, the concluding part of his trilogy of Gorski novels. He injects a wry humour into the tiniest of details and delves into the darkest recesses of his characters’ minds, but above all provides an entertaining, profound and moving read.

Graeme Macrae Burnet is one of the UK’s brightest literary talents. His second novel, His Bloody Project, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2016, won the Saltire Society Fiction Book of the Year Award 2016, and was shortlisted for the LA Times Book Awards 2017. It has been published around the world. His fourth novel, Case Study, was longlisted for the Booker Prize 2022. The two previous novels in Graeme’s Gorski trilogy have also received widespread critical praise and have become cult-like classics in several countries for their multilayered references and metafictional elements.

Recommendations Georges Simenon Maigret, Roman Durs, Mo Hayder The Treatment, Alba de Céspedes Forbidden Notebook

Paul Burke writes for Monocle Magazine, Crime Time, Crime Fiction Lover and the European Literature Network, Punk Noir Magazine (fiction contribution). He is also a CWA Historical Dagger Judge 2024. His first book An Encyclopedia of  Spy Fiction will be out in late 2025.

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