The Dead Beat cover art

The Dead Beat

Preview
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free
Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.
Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Just £0.99/mo for your first 3 months of Audible.
1 bestseller or new release per month—yours to keep.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and Originals.
Auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

The Dead Beat

By: Doug Johnstone
Narrated by: Caroline Guthrie
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly. Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

LIMITED TIME OFFER | £0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Premium Plus auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Terms apply.

About this listen

Meet Martha. It's the first day of her new job as an intern at Edinburgh's The Standard. But all's not well at the ailing newspaper, and Martha is carrying some serious baggage of her own.

Put straight onto the obituary page, she takes a call from a former employee who seems to commit suicide while on the phone, something which echoes with her own troubled past.

Setting in motion a frantic race around modern-day Edinburgh,The Dead Beat traces Martha's desperate search for answers to the dark mystery of her parents' past. Soundtracked by and interspersed with a series of gigs from the alternative music scene of her parents' generation in the early '90s, Doug Johnstone's pause-resister is a wild ride of a thriller and a perfect follow-on to his number-one Kindle best seller, Hit & Run.

Doug Johnstone is the author of five novels, most recently the acclaimed Gone Again. He is also a freelance journalist, a songwriter, and a musician and has a PhD in nuclear physics. He lives in Edinburgh.

©2014 Doug Johnstone (P)2015 Audible, Ltd
Crime Fiction Mystery Suspense Thriller & Suspense Fiction Crime

Listeners also enjoyed...

Gone Again cover art
Hit and Run cover art
Crash Land cover art
Breakers cover art
A Litter of Bones: A Scottish Crime Thriller cover art
Out in the Cold cover art
Until I Find You cover art
Murphy's Revenge cover art
Rebus cover art
Laidlaw cover art
Resurrection Bay cover art
The Edmonton Police Station Thriller Series, Books 1-3 cover art
Are You Watching Me? cover art
The Dead Won't Sleep cover art
The Magpies cover art
Divorcing Jack cover art
All stars
Most relevant
I like these stories as I can relate to the area. great description of Edinburgh and the surrounding area. the plot has a few twists and turns that keeps you interested. the narrator is very good at the Scottish accent but struggles with the US accent. did'ny stop me from enjoying the book though.

A good local story based in Edinburgh

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

Dont listen to the Narrator’s ‘American’ accent - it can never be unheard. Dreadfully written - embarrassing narration. Refund.

spectacularly awful

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.