Murder or madness?

Benbecula by Graeme Macrae Burnet

Novel ideas by Catherine

By Catherine Williams, St Duthac Book and Arts Festival

Benbecula is part of the Darkland Tales series of non-fiction novellas published by Birlinn, each written by a different Scottish author, each one exploring a moment in history and, in the retelling, banishing the myth and reclaiming the history. 


In 1857 my great-grandfather was aged about 20 years, was unmarried and living on the family croft in North Uist. Not many miles away a horrific event was about to happen that must have rocked the Outer Hebrides. 


In July of that year, Angus MacPhee bludgeoned to death his mother, father and aunt in the family home in the hamlet of Liniclate on the Hebridean island of Benbecula. There was little attempt to hide the crimes, and Angus was found nearby the following day. A brutal thing to have happened anywhere, but in an isolated, remote community on a tiny island in the Outer Hebrides the shock must have been immense. 


Graeme Macrae Burnet has taken the snatches of evidence that remain of these actual events and fleshed them out into a reimagining of what led up to that fateful day. Using statements given at the time, including one from Angus’s brother, Malcolm, Burnet creates a tense, tragic, psychological narrative with Malcolm as the storyteller.

As a novella it stands up well, as this compact format mirrors the size of the island, the closeness of the community and the fragments left of the original story. Burnet brings back to life the characters without judgement and sets them in a harsh landscape, where life isn’t living, it is surviving. There are plenty of loose ends, contradictions and disturbing possibilities to keep a book group busy for quite a while.


In bringing to the fore a little-known true story, Burnet has succeeded in doing what he set out to do. If you enjoy a short novel, you will certainly enjoy this one and I recommend it to you.


I did find it hard not to compare Benbecula with Burnet’s Booker-shortlisted His Bloody Project, where very similar themes of remote communities, hardship, isolation and ultimately madness are explored and given space to develop and where tension builds page by page and then twists until we are caught in the headlights of our own delusions. 


Benbecula by the outstanding Scottish author, Graeme Macrae Burnet, was published in 2025 by Polygon. It is longlisted for the Highland Book Prize 2025, with the shortlist to be announced in May 2026. I hope you enjoy it.

I worked for the mobile library service for 28 years, driving and staffing the mobile library that covered Evanton right up to Rosehall and all points in between. Since taking early retirement I have been involved with the St Duthac Book & Arts Festival Group, planning and producing an annual Festival in and around Tain. I am never far from books, and in the coming months myself and colleague Peter Newman will take turns reviewing a book and hopefully introducing you to authors you have not yet tried.