Two children. A politician with secrets. A kidnapper with nothing left to lose.

A mother is knocked out on her own doorstep in Edinburgh. Her two young children are gone, sedated and photographed in the boot of a car nobody recognises. The message to their father is clear: no police, or only one comes home.

DI Sam Winter is pulled into the abduction of Barnaby and Marina Harkness, taken while their father—MSP Chris Harkness—sat in a Holyrood committee room, doing his best to shield a billionaire from a financial scandal that could bring them both down. Harkness wants the police kept close enough to look cooperative and far enough away to be useless. The press want access. And the powerful men circling the family want the whole thing to disappear quietly.

The abductor has been watching, planning, and waiting for months. He's not after money. He's after something that people with serious money have worked very hard to keep buried.

As Winter unpicks the Harkness family, the case opens up a world of political corruption, charitable fraud and a grief so old it's calcified into something dangerous. And with two children in the hands of a man who knows exactly what he's doing, the clock is running from the moment it starts.

No Time to Grieve is a propulsive Scottish crime thriller packed with tension, dark humour, and razor-edged emotion, and is the second book in the DI Sam Winter series: sharp, darkly funny Scottish crime thrillers set in Edinburgh and wider Scotland. Perfect for fans of JD Kirk, Ian Rankin, Val McDermid and LJ Ross.