The best books of 2025: Allan Massie names his top ten
Full of ideas and excitement, these were my highlights of 2025, writes Allan Massie
The Predicament, by William Boyd (Viking) This new novel featuring the travel writer and semi-professional spy Gabriel Dax is set in England, Central America and Germany in 1963. The plot will prepare the reader for The Predicament: Kennedy’s assassination in November of that year, and Boyd pens an extremely interesting and plausible version of what happened in Dallas on that fateful afternoon.
Upland: A Journey through Time and the Hills, by Ian Crofton (Birlinn) Rich in memories and beautifully written, Ian Crofton’s account of a lifetime walking the hills and mountains of Scotland, England and Wales makes for a delightful book, and one of its peculiar pleasures is that the author derives as much enjoyment from small, friendly hills as he does from the grander mountains. That said, the last chapter’s evocation of the Cairngorms is splendidly rich and full of good stories.
The Hallmarked Man by Robert Galbraith (Sphere) This enthralling novel from Robert Galbraith (aka JK Rowling) begins with private detective Cormoran Strike being asked by a nervous, well-born woman in her thirties, mother of a baby whose existence she wants to keep secret, to find out what has become of her young lover, the baby’s father, who has disappeared. These Galbraith novels are remarkable, the management of a variety of themes and stories extraordinary. Indeed, I would rather read Galbraith than any other crime writer now active.
Exile: The Captive Years of Mary, Queen of Scots by Rosemary Goring (Birlinn) In Exile, Rosemary Goring is able to draw on the recently deciphered coded letters Mary, Queen of Scots wrote from prison to tell the story of her years in captivity in England and eventual execution. Goring’s treatment of her last months, ending in the horror of Fotheringhay, is magnificent, worthy of the queen’s superb performance. I can’t think it could have been written better.
Whispers in the Glen by Sue Lawrence (Contraband) Following the lives of two sisters through the First and Second World Wars, Sue Lawrence’s novel is suffused with a sense of decency and kindness. The author has evident sympathy and affection for her characters, and the evocation of rural Scotland a hundred years ago is engaging, pleasing with its echoes of JM Barrie’s Thrums, though there is none of the sentimentality for so long associated with the Kailyard.
Trauma Industrial Complex by Darren McGarvey (Ebury Press) In his third non-fiction book, Darren McGarvey looks at how we deal with trauma in the 21st century. Some parts of this book are slow going, but McGarvey is always interesting. He speaks to and for people whose lives have been near-broken by misfortune, cruelty, poverty and addiction, and he holds out the prospect – if not the promise – of recovery. He is honest about his own struggles, too, and sympathetic to other sufferers.
The Good Father by Liam McIlvanney (Zaffre) The Rutherfords are well-to-do, Sarah a lawyer, Gordon a university lecturer, presently at work on a book about the Border Ballads, poems in which so often horror comes swiftly. It does so here. Their only child, Rory, aged seven, disappears from the beach below their house, the family Labrador returning with one of Rory’s sandals. What follows is compelling reading, holding attention from the first page to the last.
For Emma, by Ewan Morrison (Leamington Books) If Dostoevsky had lived to be aware of artificial intelligence, he might have written something like For Emma. The novel is audacious, demanding, terrifying and yet also astonishing and deeply human. I’ve long thought Morrison the most interesting Scottish novelist of his generation, one who combines seriousness, awareness of a changing world and the traditional qualities of the craft. This is perhaps his best work to date.
Drayton and Mackenzie, by Alexander Starritt (Swift) Drayton and Mackenzie first meet at the same Oxford college, rowing in the same boat in their first year there. Drayton is a high-flier and joins a management consultancy company; Mackenzie is lazy and disorganised and goes to India to teach in a very small school. Some years later, however, they meet in a London pub and Drayton recruits Mackenzie for his team, taking him to Aberdeen, where over-manned oil companies are in trouble. A novel of ideas which is also richly enjoyable.
Miss Blaine's Prefect and the Uncharted Island, by Olga Wojtas (Saraband) Morningside librarian Shona McMonagle returns for more time-travelling adventures – this time she is whisked to an island in the Baltic, where at first she encounters ship-wrecked mariners lurking in caves, then, on the other side of the island, a settlement of indigenous people, one of them a woman who has a surprising knowledge of Scottish history. A delightful novel – one to make you smile and, remarkably today, laugh out loud.
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