The very curious incident: Top crime after health scare that baffled medics

As one of Scotland’s foremost crime writers Doug Johnstone is familiar with unexpected plot twists and turns. Yet even he was baffled by the mystery of the ailing author.

Last year the fit and healthy Johnstone collapsed while on a leisurely walk on Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh only for medics to reveal the unlikely culprit: a potentially deadly stroke.

Despite losing his sense of balance which left him struggling to walk he has almost made a full recovery. And last week he was named, along with three other Scottish writers, on the shortlist for the Crime Novel of the Year Award for his 12th book, The Big Chill.

The accolade is a fine ending to a year which began with a health scare for the father of two a few weeks before lockdown while out for a stroll.

“About halfway up Arthur’s Seat I started to feel really dizzy and sick,” says Johnstone, 50, from Edinburgh. “I had to sit then lie down on the path. Basically, I got really bad vertigo and couldn’t stand. Somebody who was walking

‘ They gave me an MRI scan and said I had suffered a stroke

past had to help me to a nearby bench. I phoned my wife to come pick me up. This was around lunchtime so I went home and went to bed for a few hours with no idea what it was. I thought it was perhaps a migraine.”

Doug’s baffled doctor told him to go to the accident and emergency ward but medics there were unsure as to what caused the collapse.

“They gave me an MRI scan and a couple of hours later came back and said I’d suffered a stroke,” adds Johnstone. “They were as surprised as I was, the symptoms I described are not really what people think of as associated with a stroke.

“It affected the cerebellum at the base of my brain. This type of stroke is different from the one people are probably more familiar with, this one can have very different effects.

“In my case my sense of balance and my coordination was totally gone. At the same time I didn’t have any cognitive or speech impairment, or paralysis.”

The risk factors for a stroke include smoking, diabetes and obesity; Johnstone, as an active, healthy-eating, football-playing man, had none of these.

Doctors instead discovered a hole in his heart – a condition affecting one in four people – may have been the culprit. A blood clot is thought to have passed through the hole. Most often these are caught in the lungs. This one ended up in his

Crime writer Doug Johnstone

Andrew Eaton