When people ask where the idea for From the Shadows came from, I usually tell them about a walk in the north-west Highlands with my partner, Sarah. We were surrounded by spectacular mountains and coastline when we started talking about how strange it would be to stumble across a body in such a beautiful place. Years earlier I’d worked with a member of mountain rescue who had found a body during a search. He told me that at first he thought it was a mannequin, until he got close enough to see the texture of the skin and the watch on the person’s wrist. That tiny detail lodged itself somewhere in my imagination, and years later it became the seed of the novel.
Looking back, though, I think the story had begun much earlier.
I’ve always been drawn to mystery. As a child I grew up in a house full of books about ghosts, UFOs, monsters and unexplained mysteries, thanks largely to my father, the author and paranormal investigator Ron Halliday. I remember watching him sitting for hours at his typewriter, completely absorbed in writing. The typewriter itself seemed almost magical. When he left the room, I’d creep over and hammer away at the keys before I could even read. Those early years taught me that stories could explore the unknown, and that darkness could be fascinating as well as frightening.
At the same time, I was developing another lifelong relationship: with the Highlands.
I grew up in Stirling, looking towards mountains that seemed impossibly distant and romantic. Later, as a teenager, my friends and I spent weekends camping in the hills, and during university I became obsessed with mountaineering and climbing. Eventually I moved to the Highlands, where I’ve now lived for around two decades. I now know the landscapes up here intimately, but they still have the power to surprise and fascinate me.
What I love about the Highlands is that they contain so many contradictions. They’re beautiful, but also isolated, places of extraordinary peace, yet filled with centuries of history, conflict and folklore. You can stand in complete silence while knowing that countless lives have unfolded on the same ground beneath your feet. That feeling of layers—the past sitting just beneath the surface of the present—has always fascinated me.
It wasn’t until I discovered Scandinavian crime fiction that I realised those qualities could become the heart of the stories I wanted to write.
Like so many crime readers, I was captivated by The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Bridge and The Killing. I admired writers such as Stieg Larsson and Henning Mankell, but it was the atmosphere of Scandinavian storytelling that affected me most. These stories weren’t simply murder mysteries. They understood that landscape could shape emotion, that silence could be as unsettling as violence, and that ordinary places could suddenly become frightening.
I realised the Highlands could do exactly the same thing.
People often think of Scotland as dramatic and picturesque, but living here reminds you that beauty and darkness are never very far apart. Remote glens, empty roads and isolated communities have their own psychology. There’s a particular feeling that comes from standing alone in a vast landscape where help is hours away. That’s not something unique to Scotland, but it felt closely related to the emotional world I recognised in Scandinavian crime fiction.
Rather than trying to imitate Nordic stories, I wanted to capture that same sense of atmosphere in a distinctly Highland setting. The landscape wouldn’t simply provide a backdrop for a murder investigation; it would become another character, influencing everyone who lived within it.
Crime fiction has always appealed to me because it combines the excitement of adventure with the suspense of mystery. I’ve been fascinated by true crime, disappearances and the psychology of violence for as long as I can remember, but I never wanted to write novels that were simply puzzles to be solved. Violent crime is genuinely horrifying. Through my own work as an addiction counsellor and psychotherapist, I’ve encountered enough human suffering to know that violence leaves deep psychological scars. I wanted my novels to acknowledge that reality while still giving readers the excitement of a gripping story.
In that sense, I think Scandinavian crime fiction gave me permission to slow down and explore the emotional consequences of violence, rather than rushing from one plot point to the next. The investigation matters, of course, but so do the people carrying it out and the communities left to live with what has happened.
When From the Shadows was adapted for television as The Dark, it was fascinating to watch those influences come full circle. Television is a collaborative medium in a way that novels never are, and I was fortunate to work with people who immediately understood the atmosphere I had been trying to create. I met with the scriptwriter Matt Hartley and the producers early in the process, and it quickly became clear that they shared the same vision. From that point on, I was happy to let them do what they do best.
Seeing the first finished episode was an amazing experience. Laura Donnelly brings such depth and humanity to DI Monica Kennedy, while Gilles Bannier’s direction captures the mood of the books beautifully. There were moments that genuinely unsettled me, despite knowing exactly what was about to happen.
Perhaps that’s the greatest compliment I could pay everyone involved. The atmosphere I’d admired for so many years in Scandinavian crime drama had survived the journey from page to screen, not because anyone was trying to imitate Nordic television, but because those same qualities—landscape, restraint, tension and psychological depth—had become part of the DNA of the story itself.
For me, the Highlands have never simply been a setting. They’re a place where beauty and darkness exist side by side, where ancient history brushes against modern life, and where the landscape seems to hold secrets of its own. Scandinavian crime fiction helped me recognise that. It changed the way I saw the place I call home, and in doing so, it changed the way I write.

you can listen to Paul Burke’s chat with GR Halliday on the Aspects of Crime podcast GRHalliday

From the Shadows is published by One World now
The Dark will be available on ITV on 12th July