A M Nicol is a retired lawyer who practiced criminal law in Scotland for forty years. He has written four true crime books, Manuel: Scotland's First Serial Killer, first edition 2008. That became a three-part television drama: In Plain Sight.
The Monster Butler about serial killer Archibald Hall followed in 2011 which was translated and sold in Japan. After that, a book about the only British policeman to be executed for a murder committed whilst on duty in 1950, Liberation followed in 2021.
After that, Sheila Garvie Mastermind or Victim - about a murder trial in Aberdeen High Court in 1968 - was published in 2022.
A man with a violent past is brutally assaulted outside a pub in a tough part of town. JD Ratcliffe, a respectable businessman who has never been in trouble with the police before, is arrested and charged with attempted murder. The victim dies, but the charge remains the same,
