A crime novel which has as its protagonist notorious Scots serial killer Bible John has become a best-seller in Spain.
Award-winning author Dolores Redondo’s latest thriller ‘Waiting for the Flood’ ended 2022 among the list of the highest selling books of the year, despite only hitting the shelves in November.
It has spent the past nine weeks topping the charts in Spain, with a first edition - published simultaneously in Spanish and Catalan - selling in excess of 300,000 copies to date.
The success of the novel has been such that Basque newspaper El Correo labelled it “the most important new release in the Spanish publishing world in years”.
READ MORE: Leading Spanish crime writer believes Bible John 'may well be alive' in Bilbao
Set between Glasgow and Bilbao in the days prior to a huge flood that devastated the Basque Country in 1983, it sees Scottish detective Noah Scott Sherrington pursue Bible John to Bilbao on a hunch that the serial killer fled there to escape authorities in his native Glasgow.
It’s the latest success for Donostia-born author Redondo, whose hugely popular Baztán Trilogy has helped catapult her to the very top of the Spanish literary scene in recent years.
While promoting the novel, the author said she believes it is “plausible” that notorious Scots serial killer Bible John could be alive and well and living in the northern Spanish city of Bilbao.
Speaking about the novel to El Español, Ms Redondo said she believed the notorious Scots serial killer could be living as a “respectable old man” in the port city.
She said: “As far as we know this person may still be alive. It would be something similar to the case of Jack the Ripper, although we can be assured that he is dead because a long time has passed.
"Uncaught killers become legends, there's always a story around them that they were very smart, smart enough to be able to run from the police, but I think other factors can play a part as well.
“Today he could be a respectable old man of those who walks through Bilbao or Glasgow”.
The unidentified killer has loomed large down through the decades in Scotland.
He is believed to have murdered three young women, Patricia Docker, 25, Jemima MacDonald, 32, and Helen Puttock, 29, over a period of 18 months between 1968 and 1969 in Glasgow.
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