Walking with Murder

As a boy living in Highland Perthshire, Ian Nimmo also came under its spell of Robert Louis Stevenson's 'Kidnapped'. The fascination continued until one day he looked out his climbing boots and rucksack and headed for Mull to follow in the footsteps of David Balfour and Alan Breck in that great trek across Scotland that turned into a murder hunt.

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'Your life shall be like the hunted deer's, and ye'll sleep with your hands on your weapons. Either take to the heather with me. Or else hang', Alan told David after the shooting of the Red Fox. Ian Nimmo also took to the heather, clamped down in it as darkness fell, supped dramach, guddled for trout and shared their fugitive lives over some of Scotland's wildest and most spectacular country. Now not only is he regarded as an authority on the Appin Murder, but also on the life of Robert Louis Stevenson. What makes Ian Nimmo's account so interesting is that he explores the kidnapped route across Scotland through three eras- as it was after the 'Forty Five, the setting of Kidnapped, as he found it forty years ago when he first tramped the Kidnapped trail, and noticing the dramatic changes on the route today, which are altering the very nature and character of Scotland.