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A Granite Silence

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What to expect

'Absolutely got me hooked' Val McDermid

SHORTLISTED FOR BEST NOVEL AT THE BRITISH SCIENCE FICTION ASSOCIATION AWARDS 2026

A Granite Silence is an exploration - a journey through time to a particular house, in a particular street, Urquhart Road, Aberdeen in 1934, where eight-year-old Helen Priestly lives with her mother and father.

Among this long, grey corridor of four-storey tenements, a daunting expanse of granite, working families are squashed together like pickled herrings in their narrow flats. Here are Helen's neighbours: the Topps, the Josses, the Mitchells, the Gordons, the Donalds, the Coulls and the Hunts.

Returning home from school for her midday meal, Helen is sent by her mother Agnes to buy a loaf from the bakery at the end of the street. Agnes never sees her daughter alive again.

Nina Allan explores the aftermath of Helen's disappearance, turning a probing eye to the close-knit neighbourhood - where everyone knows everyone, at least by sight - and with subtlety and sympathy, explores the intricate layers of truth and falsehood that can coexist in one moment of history.

Full of echoes, allusions and eerie diversions, A Granite Silence is an investigation into a notorious true crime case, but also a stylish, imaginative inquiry into who gets to tell a story, how it is told, and why.

Critics Review

A Granite Silence is a masterpiece [of true crime fiction], so good it makes me wonder if there is a better writer than Nina Allan in Britain today?
David Peace
The murder in Aberdeen in 1934 of eight-year-old Helen Priestley horrified the nation and had a shattering impact on the over-crowded tenement community where she lived. In this closely researched account, Nina Allan creatively explores the many elements exposed by this dreadful crime.
The Herald, 10 Books to Read This Month
Nina Allan takes this notorious real-life case and weaves around it an extraordinary blend of forensic research and imaginative fiction. It all adds up to a wonderfully immersive portrait of a place and a time, and the awful ease with which ordinary lives can tip into tragedy.
Mail on Sunday
A brilliantly written and haunting speculative fiction novel, one of the best you're likely to read this year
Fantasy Hive
In A Granite Silence Nina Allen explores the story from every angle, using police records, court transcripts, newspaper reports. She examines every detail, every person involved, in the most minute detail . . . Allan's factual accounts and her fictional stories are equally in my memory now; and perhaps that was her point. Excellent.
Fortean Times
No ordinary work of true crime . . . A Granite Silence succeeds magnificently
TLS
Allan moves seamlessly from present to past, from fact to fiction, in prose that is at once almost gratuitously clear and eerily provocative
The Tablet (Novel of the Week)
There is a strong sense of place in Allan's descriptions of Aberdeen (the granite of the title) and the characters are credibly drawn. The style of writing is simple and personal while at the same time alert to the way in which meanings and symbols interact and repeat . . . a thoughtful, original and compelling read
Historical Novel Society
Absolutely got me hooked
Val McDermid, Daily Telegraph
Author Nina Allan
Narrator Fiona MacLaine
Duration 9 hours and 52 minutes
Release Date
ISBN 9781529435597
Format Audiobook
Publisher Quercus
Genre Fiction: general and literary, Historical crime and mysteries
Availability AU, GB, IE

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