Quotes from Stuart MacBride

Nah, mostly they're just students. Bit of weed, bit of booze, bit of studying, bit of pining away in their rooms wondering why nobody wants to shag them.

Should probably do

genteel swearing as she pulled out her mobile phone,

he met this woman at the supermarket where he works.' She sighed. 'But he doesn't really love her! He's just punishing me … I mean, she's got no breasts.

You're not exactly a bag of spanners, and certain male bits have a mind of their own, and can you please stop staring at me like I'm a sex offender.

A thoughtful pause and then: 'Maybe to make it easy to find, but look like it's hard to find, so you'd find it but think it wasn't meant to be found, even though you only really found it because someone wanted it to be found?

The real me died years ago. I died and I went to hell. This is hell.

What, other forces down south?' Sometimes, with Wee Bernie, it was difficult to tell if he was being obtuse, or genuinely thick.

Behind him, his ancient Springer Spaniel sat on the wet grass, legs akimbo, slowly absorbing the drizzle.

It wasn't as busy as yesterday – most of the desks were unpersoned

guarded by a young PC reading a book. With a guilty jump he stuffed the Ian Rankin under his seat.

She looked about as bored as it was possible to be and not die from it.

Susan took a sheet of paper and pinned it to the fridge door amongst all the other kids' pictures: frogs, princesses, unicorns, dragons, and monster trucks. All of which looked as if they'd been done during Picasso's Off His Face period. The new one was some sort of dinosaur/

Good boy. And while you're about tonight, go see if they've done a post mortem on that bloody dog yet. And don't spend all night in the arms of some prozzie down the docks. I'm not signing off any expense form with "blowjobs" on it.

skoofed his way through a tin of Irn-Bru.

All five of them gathered around a shiny black headstone – like a chunk of kitchen worktop with gold lettering on it: 'NOW ANNOYING THE ANGELS'.

He said that all you British are the same – you never bother to learn anyone else's language. You think you can still rule the world by shouting slowly at the natives.

När höjdarna ger dig en lort, putsar du upp den och säger "Men Gud, så fin!" Det för att de blir imponerade av ens intellekt, perceptionsförmåga och kapacitet. Om du inte gör det står du bara där med en lort i handen.

Miserable people with miserable lives, buggering about in a miserable, pointless parade of misery.

Sim put the mug back on the table, by the laptop, blushing so hard she couldn't have been far off spontaneously combusting.

You stay here. Don't move. If I think you've so much as farted while we're gone I'm going to take your goolies off with a potato peeler. Understand?

with Pittodrie Stadium – home to the intermittently disastrous Aberdeen Football Club – lurking in the background, drab and dreary in the rain. Lovely.

Aye, well, technically he's no' in custody yet. He's just had an unfortunate toilet-related mishap.