Off to Deadfall, Scotland with Aline Templeton

Submitted: 11th June 2025

Off to Deadfall, Scotland with Aline Templeton

Aline Templeton invites you all on the train to Invernesshire now to visit the setting of her book – Deadfall. Dare to come onboard?

Deadfall Aline Templeton

Location map of Deadfall

It was the small streamlets spilling out of the overfull burn running through the woods – small black streamlets, writhing to and fro across my path like so many little black snakes – that gave me the shiver down my spine that I get when I know I’ve found the setting for my next book.

Location map of Deadfall

The Black Isle, near Inverness

Location has always been as much a character in my books as any human being, right from early days when I set the DI Marjorie Fleming series in rural Galloway, a beautiful and unspoilt area of southwest Scotland. On this occasion, when I was about to write Deadfall, the sixth in the DCI Kelso Strang series, I had come to an intriguing area – The Black Isle, near Inverness.

Location map of Deadfall

It isn’t an island, but a peninsula, and no one seems quite sure where the name came from, or the ‘black ‘ either, though most likely from its dark, fertile soil. For some time I’d been interested in the Wood Wide Web – the theory that trees and the fungi beneath have a symbiotic relationship allowing communication between them – and from soil like that trees grow in abundance.

Location map of Deadfall

The woodland I visited did, indeed, have black soil so that the burn ran black, its stones were black and to complete the sinister scene, beside it was a stark white lightning-struck leafless tree.

Location map of Deadfall

In Deadfall, the Drumdalloch woods speak differently to the different characters. For some, the trees are the good angels for our troubled minds, an untouchable heritage; Some say that they are a positive treasury for academic research; for one in particular they mean only MONEY, writ large, in the shape of a black ebony, known as the Million Dollar Tree.

Location map of Deadfall

The characters seemed to spring up out of the setting: the dutiful daughter, struggling financially to honour her dead father’s beloved woods while half-hating them herself, terrified when storms make them roar like a sea in flood and great branches fall; the brother, on the make and only interested to exploit the legacy; his young son who believes the accident at the oak tree that killed his mother was no accident; the unscrupulous police officer and his hotelier friend who see the potential Drumdalloch could have; the research student whose promising future is dependent on continued access; the academic director desperate to use the place as a stepping-stone to international recognition that he cannot earn.

Location map of Deadfall

I’d never been to the Black Isle myself. Coming from a fishing-village in Fife’s East Neuk, I think when it came to childhood holidays it perhaps seemed too much like home and we always headed for the wild, dramatic and beautiful north west coast where there were soaring eagles to see and mountains to climb for those so inclined as well as impossibly exciting roads. I have found settings there for other books too.

Location map of Deadfall

This time, I went and stayed for a few days, talking to some of the locals and getting a feel for the place, visiting the Scot-Mid Co-op in Avoch and the excellent coffee shop in Fortrose, walking again in the woods and admiring the rolling fields and rocky cliffs. I wasn’t lucky enough to see dolphins passing down the coast, but people do. This sort of research is the very best part of writing!

Location map of Deadfall

The town I write about in Deadfall, Kilbain, doesn’t actually exist – it’s just a composite of the various towns and villages I visited. An invented place can be structured to support the demands of the plot, whereas inaccuracies about a real place tends to invite complaints!

Inverness, with all its history, is nearby and on Visit Scotland – The Black Isle there are tempting lists of attractions and activities in the Isle itself. Do go, and enjoy walking through the woods, the way I did.

But please drive carefully on the A9 ! It’s the longest road in Scotland, and one of the most dangerous!

Thank you Aline!