Alan Stewart is a retired Tayside Police inspector who was involved in a variety of policing roles over his almost 50 years of service.
These included 18 years as force wildlife crime officer and three years as intelligence officer with the UK Wildlife Crime Unit. He retired in 2015.
Having written five books on factual wildlife crime investigations, plus two on wildlife in Perthshire, he was keen to write crime fiction.
Now, having written a number of non-fiction books over the years and having ventured into crime fiction too, he’s just published his latest novel Cruel Intentions which picks up where his previous instalment Calls from the Wild left off.
What’s the new book about?
“My two novels are based not only on many years’ knowledge of the crimes committed against our wildlife, but of the difficulties in getting some of these cases to court,” he said.
“I left the ending of my first novel, Calls from the Wild, open so that some of the fictional characters could continue in the next book.
“The new novel, Cruel Intentions, carries on following the investigations carried out by PC Bob McKay, my fictional wildlife crime officer covering the Tayside Division of Police Scotland.
“But there are many new characters: some are rogues and some are Bob’s colleagues.”
Cruel Intentions poses the question – who is the ex-boxer who has moved to Perthshire from the north of England and is poaching deer and badger digging with his dogs?
Bob gets a tip from a strange source: a gamekeeper in jail for causing the death by poisoning of a farmer’s young daughter.
The convoluted investigation takes him to the estates owned by a rich former sporting agent, Nigel Roberts, and one of his head gamekeepers, who is suspected of killing birds of prey.
Despite an awkward and unsupportive detective inspector as his line manager, Bob sticks with the investigation into the ex-boxer, who he has now identified as Big Mo, while his case-load expands to cover disturbance of dolphins, destruction of a beaver dam, illegal fox hunting, finch trapping and the theft of two terriers.
Will Bob succeed in getting Big Mo and the head gamekeeper convicted of their crimes?
Might he also get the rich landowner, Nigel Roberts, before a court, using a unique and innovative charge, or will Big Mo put a spanner in the works?
Tayside police career
Born in Perth, Alan is a former pupil of Craigie School and Perth High School.
He worked on Perthshire’s Dupplin estate before starting as a police cadet in 1964, spending time as a constable in Dunblane and Perth.
He spent a significant part of his career in CID and with the drugs squad.
He was promoted to inspector in 1993, covering Crieff and Kinross, and retired after 31.5 years police service in 1997.
During his last four years with the force, he was Tayside police’s first dedicated wildlife crime officer and in 2001 he was awarded the MBE for services to policing wildlife crime.
He was re-employed as a civilian full-time wildlife crime co-ordinator – a role he held until 2011 – and also served as intelligence officer with the Livingston-based National Wildlife Crime Unit.
He investigated everything from bird of prey persecutions, to illegal trapping, poisoning, shooting, and poaching of salmon, game and deer.
The highest profile case he investigated was the poisoned golden eagle found at Millden estate in Angus in 2008.
It was when he starred in the 2007 BBC documentary Wildlife Detectives about the work of wildlife officers in Scotland, however, that he took his first foray into writing wildlife books after it was suggested he should write a book to accompany the series.
Alan went on to write other books including The Thin Green Line – a compilation of his colleagues’ wildlife crime investigations covering the whole of the UK; the Lone Furrow on more recent wildlife crime investigations, and Wildlife and the Law.
While they’ve all tapped his extensive knowledge and love of the environment, Walking with Wildlife, written between August 2018 and August 2019, was perhaps the most satisfying as it gave him the chance to revisit haunts of his youth and observe intimately how things have changed.
Where to get the new book
Cruel Intentions is published by Thirsty Books and is priced at £12.
Signed books can also be obtained from the author via https://wildlifedetective.wordpress.com/books/
