Marion Todd Books in Order

If you're new to Marion Todd: See Them Run → In Plain Sight → Lies to Tell
If you want the full Clare Mackay story: See Them Run → In Plain Sight → Lies to Tell → What They Knew → Next in Line → Old Bones Lie
If you like small-town Scottish police procedurals: See Them Run → What They Knew → Old Bones Lie
If you want a quick sampler before committing: See Them Run → In Plain Sight

Marion Todd grew up in Dundee, and the east coast of Scotland still sits close to the heart of her fiction. A native of the city, she studied music and spent years working as a piano teacher and accompanist before becoming a full-time novelist. She now lives in north-east Fife, looking across the River Tay, with Dundee still very much in view.

She did not arrive at crime writing in a straight line. Todd had been writing since childhood, and over the years she placed newspaper pieces and short stories, including work in the Dundee Courier and My Weekly. In 1987 she won first prize in the Family Circle short story competition for children, a moment that gave her a real push to keep going.

Life, though, had its own timetable.

Alongside raising her family, Todd worked a remarkable mix of jobs, including lecturer, candle-maker, and hotel lounge pianist. She has said that the piano work gave her rich material for fiction, and it is easy to see why. A crime writer could do a lot with years spent quietly watching people in public, taking in their moods, habits, and little evasions.

When she returned to writing more seriously, she did it the slow and stubborn way. She joined a crime book group in Dundee, kept reading, kept drafting, and kept learning. A key moment came when she read Kate Atkinson's One Good Turn and began to think she might be able to write crime herself. An early novel did not make it into print, but the detective she created for it, Clare Mackay, stayed with her.

That turned out to be the break she needed. After plenty of rejections, and just when self-publishing was starting to look likely, Todd found representation and sold See Them Run, the first Clare Mackay novel. Published in 2019, it introduced readers to a Scottish police procedural set in and around St Andrews. The book later made the shortlist for the Bloody Scotland Scottish Crime Debut of the Year award.

Since then she has built the Clare Mackay books into a steady, fast-moving series with a strong sense of place. Titles such as In Plain Sight, Lies to Tell, What They Knew, Next in Line, and Old Bones Lie mix solid detective work with the private messiness of victims, suspects, and police officers. Readers who enjoy Todd's books often respond to the clear plotting, the pressure of the investigations, and the way St Andrews and north-east Fife feel lived in rather than polished for display.

Place matters to her.

Todd has spoken about wanting ordinary lives at the center of her crime fiction. Her novels are less interested in criminal empires than in the smaller secrets people carry around until something snaps. That gives the books their particular feel. They sit between cozy mystery and darker Scottish crime, grounded, local, and more interested in motive than spectacle.

These days Todd writes full time, and the Clare Mackay series has continued well beyond its debut. She still lives in north-east Fife, still looks across the Tay toward Dundee, and still shares the occasional glimpse of life at home, including time spent with her daughter's unruly dog. It feels fitting. Her novels are full of observation, and you get the sense she has been gathering it for years.