This article is just the beginning of a series of biographical sketches about Scottish authors. Stay tuned for more installments in the coming months.

Marion Chesney was born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1936. Chesney has written historical romance novels under her own name and has been published under several pen names. She is mainly known for writing mystery series'. The Hamish Macbeth novels are probably her best known series, written under the pen name M.C. Beaton. As of this writing, there are twenty four books in the series. Hamish Macbeth is a police constable in the small highland town of Lochdubh. The first one, Death of a Gossip, was published in 1985. The first novel in her Agatha Raisin series, also written under M.C. Beaton, is Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death which was published in 1992. There are currently eighteen books in that series. Agatha Raisin is a retired public relations woman who helps to solve murders and eventually sets up her own detective agency. In 2003, Chesney began publishing a series of Edwardian mysteries under her own name but only wrote four books, giving them up to continue with her two incredibly successful series'.

Ian Rankin was born on April 28, 1960 in Cardenen, Fife. He graduated from the University of Edinburgh. In 1987, his first Inspector Rebus novel, Knots & Crosses was published. So far, Rankin has written seventeen titles in the Rebus series. In 2002, Rankin was awarded an OBE. He lives in Edinburgh with his wife and two sons.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh, Scotland on May 22, 1859. He is best known for his Sherlock Holmes stories. His first published story was The Mystery of the Sasassa Valley in 1879. Two years later Doyle graduated from medical school and the next year opened his own practice. In 1885 he married Louise Hawkins; they had two children, a boy and a girl. His first Sherlock Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet, was published in 1887. In 1891 he gave up his medical career to write full time. In 1902 he was knighted after writing the pamphlet The War in South Africa: Its Cause and Conduct. Doyle married his second wife, Jean Leckie in 1907; his first wife had died the previous year of TB. Doyle and Jean Leckie had two sons. Doyle died of a heart attack on July 8, 1930.