'He has a novelist's eye for the beauty of the landscape and the shape of its contours. His descriptions…are elegiac in their intensity, and he has a sureness of touch which comes from a real understanding of the countryside…this is a novel of startling originality, an absorbing psychological thriller as well as a deft portrayal of friendship and betrayal. Nicoll writes fluently and well'
Magnus linklater The Times
 

In the magnificent wilderness that is the Scottish Highlands, Aaron and Hugh have been friends for as long as they can remember, bound by a shared affinity for their surroundings and an increasing sense of alienation from the remote, close-knit community that is their home.

But when a young woman - fleeing life in the city and a broken love affair - moves to the area, the ties that bind the boys are slowly, irrevocably stretched to near-breaking point. And as the strain on Aaron and Hugh's friendship builds, so the violence that is endemic in the land begins to infect them both. Driven to the very edge of reason, they turn on their world to vent their frustration and anger and hurt in the only way they know, embarking on a spree of quite horrific destruction…

‘Will leave you breathless. This is a bleak novel whose tensions build flawlessly into a shocking denouement’
Literary Review

‘The excitement and disquiet gained spectacular, page-turning momentum...There are many highlights in Nicoll's sweeping and assured narrative...but the real star of White Male Heart is the Highlands…it is his supreme gift that he pulls this off on the page. He creates a backdrop so vivid that it becomes integral to the action…Meaty stuff indeed’
Scotland on Sunday

‘A novel of startling originality, an absorbing psychological thriller as well as a deft portrayal of friendship and betrayal’
The Times

‘Spectacular, page-turning…sweeping and assured’
Scotland on Sunday

‘An explosively violent début...Nicoll reveals himself every bit as much a natural-born writer...lighting the fuses for his Highland Götterdämmerung’
The Scotsman

‘Eerily impressive…Nicoll produces prose both rhapsodically beautiful and red in tooth and claw, marking out this modern gothic tale’
The Sunday Times

‘At once both brutal and beautiful…White Male Heart owes an obvious debt to Iain Banks’s The Wasp Factory and a less obvious one to Andrew Greig’s Electric Brae, both also remarkable debut novels by Scottish men, but Ruaridh Nicoll stakes out a corner of the territory that is uniquely his. The quality of the observation is breathtaking ...this is an absorbing and uncomfortable read, raising as many questions as it answers about what it means to be a young man in a territory where the roles are few and growing more limited with every passing year. But White Male Heart has far wider relevance than that. This is a novel that is both heart-rending and heart-stopping but which never loses sight of the importance of the blackest of humour. It is without question a welcome and worthy addition to the growing sub-genre of tartan noir’
VAL McDERMID The Express

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