Graeme Macrae Burnet


Graeme Macrae Burnet is a Scottish writer. His first novel, The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau, earned him the Scottish Book Trust New Writer Award in 2013, and his second novel, His Bloody Project, was shortlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize. In 2017, he won the Author of the Year category in the Sunday Herald Culture Awards. One review in The Guardian described Burnet's novels as an experiment with a genre that might be called "false true crime". In July 2022, Burnet's novel Case Study was named on the longlist of the Booker Prize.
WWW graememacraeburnet.com𝕏 gmacraeburnet

Personal life

Burnet was born in Kilmarnock, Scotland, in 1967. On his mother's side, he has family ties to the northwest Highlands.

Career

The Herald described the Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau, his first, as "a captivating psychological thriller... very accessible and thoroughly satisfying."
Burnet's second novel tells the story of a triple murder in a remote Scottish Highland community during the 1860s. His Bloody Project won the Saltire Society Fiction Book of the Year Award and the Vrij Nederland Thriller of the Year Award. It was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Mystery/Thriller, and the 2017 European Crime Fiction Prize. His Bloody Project has been published in more than 20 languages, including German, Russian, Chinese, French, Spanish, Persian, and Estonian. The Telegraphs Jake Kerridge described it as "an astonishing piece of writing" and one review in The Guardian stated that the novel "richly deserves the wider attention the Booker has brought it".
The Accident on the A35 is a follow-up to The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau and the second part of the trilogy. It was longlisted for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year 2018 and the Hearst Big Book Awards – Harpers Bazaar Modern Classics 2018.
Published by Saraband, Case Study was longlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize.
Published by Saraband in 2024, A Case of Matricide is the concluding part of his trilogy of Gorski novels.
In October 2025 Polygon published Benbecula, part of Birlinn’s Darkland Tales series which sees Scottish writers re-imagine episodes from the country’s history and legend. Set on the island of Benbecula, the novella fictionalises an 1857 triple murder and is narrated by the killer’s brother.

Awards and selected recognition

''Gorski'' trilogy

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Other

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