Your best mate just fell off a cliff in mysterious circumstances. You were the last person to see him alive. What do you do?
If you’re David Lindsay from Arbroath, you leg it – and don’t go back. Not for fifteen years.
Then Nicola Cruickshank – yes, that Nicola, the girl you always fancied but never had the guts to speak to – gets in touch. She wants you back for a school reunion. At the very place it happened. Of course you say yes. Not to lay ghosts to rest, but because you still fancy Nicola.
The thing is, if you are David Lindsay, then returning to Arbroath isn’t going to bring closure. Because when someone else tumbles off the cliffs – an act the locals now call tombstoning – David has a choice: run away again, or finally find out why people around him keep dying…
I'm thrilled to be hosting the blog tour for Tombstoning by Doug Johnstone today. Many thanks to Anne Cater from Random Things Tours for inviting me and to Orenda Books for my advance copy of the novel.
I've been loving Doug Johnstone's books since I read Fault Lines back in 2018 but 2026 actually marks twenty years since his first book, Tombstoning was published. To celebrate, Orenda Books have republished his debut and what a pleasure it was to be able to see where it all began for an author who has become one of my cast-iron favourites. Tombstoning is a thriller but Doug Johnstone uses crime as a backdrop to explore human behaviour and even at this earliest stage in his career, his perceptive empathy for his characters and his innate sense of place is obvious.
David Lindsay was a typical small-town boy whose teenage years were unremarkable until the drunken nights and fumbling snogs kept to an abrupt end when his best friend, Colin mysteriously fell from a cliff. The verdict was misadventure but some people believed he had died by suicide, others that there was a more nefarious reason for the tragedy. Whatever the cause, David left Arbroath after the funeral and has never returned. Fast-forward fifteen years and he is still living in Edinburgh. David is an instantly familiar character; he hates his job working for a failing dot-com company and now in his thirties, is now single. His nights are often spent with a bottle of whisky and there's a clear sense that he is stagnating. Everything changes however, when he receives an email from an old school friend, Nicola Cruickshank inviting him back to Arbroath for a school reunion.
He still has no intention of ever returning to his home town but Nicola is the one that got away. They shared some kisses but nothing more and he can't resist replying to her message. The sparks that fly between the pair instantly and their red-hot chemistry is completely convincing. Their shared history, in spite of the years apart, lends itself to an easy repartee and their flirty banter had me rooting for them from the off. It helps, too, that Nicola is such a likeable character. She has raised her daughter, Amy by herself but unlike the stereotypical portrayal of single mothers, she isn't worn down by the drudgery. Instead, she is given her own agency and wants David because she fancies him, not because she needs a father figure for Amy.
Of course, she manages to persuade David to go to the reunion with her but his return proves to be difficult. The ghosts of his past are harder to ignore here and Doug Johnstone beautifully captures the pathos of revisiting childhood haunts where nothing and yet everything has changed. The descriptions are outstanding, particularly when it comes to the dubious charms of a small town night out. The sticky floors, bitchy exchanges in the Ladies, old rivalries and cocksure bouncers encapsulate a night of drunken reminiscing but just as David begins to make some peace with his past, another tragedy occurs.
Tombstoning isn't a fast-paced thriller and much of the book is concerned with giving readers a real feeling as to who David and Nicola are and where they come from. It epitomises exactly why I love Doug Johnstone's books because no matter who his characters are or what situation he puts them in, they are always imbued with flawed humanity. The final part of the novel, however, is dramatically suspense-filled as David and Nicola are forced to improvise their way through a terrifying situation.
The tombstoning of the title is in reference to the high-risk fad of jumping off cliffs and other high points into water. When the book was first published, the phrase had come to prominence thanks to a surge in the craze, particularly among young people. Here, the teenagers of Arbroath desperate to experience a buzz that will take them beyond the mundanity of their lives have started treating Colin as some sort of martyr. While it's painfully obvious as to how wrong they are, it's also a raw portrayal of the incessant need for some to risk everything to feel something. The exploration of mental health issues is as sensitively explored as I'd expect in a Doug Johnstone book where he never offers shallow, unrealistic solutions but reflects upon societal realities, most notably in working class communities where choice and the opportunities to escape can be limited.
Tombstoning is a poignant, gripping and darkly humorous introduction to a body of work by an author whose insightful authenticity here became a constant hallmark of his work. I loved it and cannot recommend it highly enough.
Tombstoning is published in 2026 by Orenda Books and can be purchased from their website. Further purchasing links can be found here.
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