Tholed Assize

Glasgow. December 2029.

Five years ago a jury of fifteen believed Shannon Hamill, and acquitted the man she accused anyway. Not proven. A verdict Scotland has since abolished.

Now Ryan Tannock has been arrested for something else, in the same city, on a winter night, and the police have his phone.

In Scots law a man who has stood his trial has tholed his assize. He cannot be tried twice. Except that since 2011 he can, if the evidence is new and compelling, and the High Court agrees to set the old verdict aside.

Procurator Fiscal Depute Niamh Tolmie has kept one file in her own drawer since October 2024. Hugh Lamont KC has kept a list of verdicts in a black notebook for eight years. Tess Gallacher KC defended Tannock the first time, and is instructed again. And Shannon, who swore she would never do this again, is asked to.

A different winter, the same Saltmarket, and fifteen new strangers in a room nobody else will ever see.

Tholed Assize is the eighth and final novel in The Fifteen: a Scottish courtroom series about corroboration, the jury room, and the verdict Scotland kept for three hundred years.