Rachel Bremner grew up making holiday pilgrimages to Aberdeenshire, where her grandparents lived. The ruined castles, the cliff paths, the way the North Sea could be flat and silver one day and terrifying the next—that coastline never really left her.
She has always been drawn to crime fiction, not for the violence, but for the puzzle at its heart. What drives an ordinary person past the point of no return? What breaks, or bends, or gets pushed too far? These are the questions she explores in her fiction.
The Crimson Keep is her debut novel and the first in the DCI Surinder Taws series, set on the Aberdeenshire coast. Sindy Taws is a detective who shares Rachel's affection for that landscape, her tendency to overthink things, and her habit of not letting things go when she probably should.
Rachel lives in Scotland with her three children and three cats, all of whom have strong opinions about how her time should be spent.
