Polygon’s senior editor Alison Rae has acquired World rights (including audio) for three more novels in the Dr Jack Cuthbert thriller series. In October 2024, Polygon bought Allan Gaw’s first four titles: The Silent House of Sleep, The Moon’s More Feeble Fire, To the Shades Descend and The Shadows and the Dust. Allan’s debut novel, self-published and only available as print on demand, won the Bloody Scotland Debut Prize 2024 and was a Waterstones Scottish Book of the Month in January 2025 after being republished by Polygon. Since then, the series has enjoyed great success, with French rights recently sold to the fabulously named Maison Pop and North American rights sold to New York publisher Mysterious Press.
No one likes death but it just happens to be Dr Jack Cuthbert’s business. Tall, urbane, brilliant but damaged, the Scottish pathologist is the best Scotland Yard has seen. But he is a man who lives with secrets, who still battles demons brought back from the frontline trenches of the First World War. Scotsman literary critic Allan Massie said: ‘This murder mystery makes for compelling reading… Cuthbert himself is a finely conceived and drawn character’. Podcaster and reviewer Alistair Braidwood praised Cuthbert as ‘a brilliant creation – part Sherlock, part Watson’.
Editor Alison Rae has said, ‘Hearing Allan Gaw read the opening courtroom scene from his debut novel at Bloody Scotland bowled me over, and it’s fantastic to now have seven Dr Jack Cuthbert thrillers on Polygon’s list. An enigmatic protagonist and ingenious plotting coupled with Allan’s accounts of the role of pathology in criminal investigation make for a visceral read: something truly unique.’
‘The success of the Dr Jack Cuthbert novels has been hugely exciting at this point in my career. I am very grateful to be working with such a professional team at Polygon. The confidence they have placed both in me and the books by commissioning the next three in the series is more than I ever expected. I hope my readers are as thrilled as I am to be continuing Jack’s story.’
–Author Allan Gaw
The next title in the series, The Shadows and the Dust, will be published by Polygon in January 2026, with the three new titles – The Last Gifts to the Dead, So Many Thoughts of Blood and Burden My Grave With Tears – to follow.
Allan Gaw studied medicine at Glasgow and trained as a pathologist. Having worked in the NHS and universities in the UK and the US, he took early retirement and now devotes his time to writing. His debut poetry collection, Love & Other Diseases, was published in 2023 by Seahorse Publications. His debut novel, The Silent House of Sleep, was published by Polygon in January 2025, followed by The Moon’s More Feeble Fire in April and To the Shades Descend in June.
