Review of Saints of the Shadow Bible by Ian Rankin (2013, Orion)

For his last case in internal affairs DI Malcolm Fox has been assigned to investigate a 30 year old murder case in which the police team was suspected of helping the perpetrator evade justice. It’s a case from the start of Rebus’ career when he was a new member of the ‘Saints of the Shadow Bible’, a group of detectives who brandished their own form of justice when the system failed to adequately punish criminals. Retired and now re-employed to work cold cases, Rebus is clinging on to being a police officer. His old team are relying on him to stifle the investigation, but that’s hardly his modus operandi, even if it means he could bring himself down. It’s a distraction he doesn’t need however given he’s got a whiff of something off in a car crash involving the justice minister’s son, which is quickly followed by the minister’s death. His old colleague DI Siobhan Clarke is involved in that case, which provides Rebus the opportunity to interfere. Rankin nicely brings his three principle characters together through the investigation of the old and new cases, spinning an intriguing and entertaining tale. As usual the strength of the story are the lead characters and their interaction, the well-constructed plot, and the contextualisation and extension of the longer series arc that made the installment feel like catching up with an old friend. My sense was that there wasn’t an element out of place.

Review of Black Cross by Greg Iles (1995, Harper)

January 1944. The Allies are preparing for to cross the Channel but there are rumours that the Nazis have a deadly surprise for them – Sarin and Soman gases, both much more deadly than anything the Allies have in their armoury. It is being developed and tested in Totenhausen, a Nazi camp that conducts medical experiments to test and develop the toxic gases. Churchill and the head of SOE, Duff Smith, hatch a plan to halt the use of the gases by bluffing the Germans into thinking that the Allies have the capability to exact revenge at scale. It involves smuggling their own experimental, unstable supply of Sarin into Germany and releasing it at Totenhausen. It will, however, kill both the concentration camp inmates as well as their captors. Churchill reasons that the inmates will die anyway and their sacrifice will save tens of thousands of lives. Eisenhower is set against the mission, but Churchill is convinced it is necessary. One of the men picked for the secret job, Jonas Stern, a Zionist guerilla fighter from Palestine, is prepared to sacrifice his own people for the greater good; the other Mark McConnell, an American pacifist and poisonous gas expert, is much more reluctant to participate in mass murder. They are flown into Northern Germany, where from the start their mission runs into trouble, leaving the two men to improvise, their moral dilemmas multiplying as they seek a way to destroy the camp, save as many inmates as possible, and steal secrets, knowing that the chances of success and escape are diminishing with each hour they are there.

Black Cross is a thriller set at the start of 1944 involving a secret Allied mission into Germany to destroy a camp that is producing and testing deadly poisonous gases. The action adventure of infiltrating Nazi Germany to perform a mission is given a twist through a series of moral dilemmas and Sophie’s choices and the selection of the two men selected to undertake the task. Mark McConnell is a pacifist and conscientious objector who is asked to perform mass murder for the greater good. Jonas Stern is a German Zionist who has no qualms using violence for political ends, but is formerly local to the area and may know people in the camp they are to destroy. Their inside agent is a nurse dedicated to saving lives, not taking them. The three of them are persuaded that since all the inmates are to die in medical experiments anyway, hastening their demise for liberation of the continent is the right thing to do. But executing the plan in practice, especially when you’re in situ and things are not going as hoped, is fraught. Iles spends the first part of the book patiently setting the scene, lining up the characters, building their relationships, and creating empathy for the camp inmates. Once McConnell and Stern are in Germany the pace shifts gears and he quickly ratchets up the tension. It all seems a little far-fetched but the story hook, dilemmas, characters, and twist and turns keep the pages turning with no let up. The result is a thought provoking action thriller, though the moral aspect seemed to get a little lost towards the end, with none of the characters reflecting in any depth on whether they’d pursued the right course of action and its consequences.

Review of Trick of the Dark by Val McDermid (2011, Sphere)

Criminal psychiatrist is Dr Charlie Flint is suspended from work after a man she cleared of murder goes on to kill four women. While waiting for her hearing she is asked by one of her old university professors to look into a possible miscarriage of justice. The husband of the professor’s daughter, whom Charlie used to babysit, was murdered on their wedding day. The professor is convinced the man’s business partners are not the murderers. Instead, she suspects successful entrepreneur, Jay Macallan Stewart, also a former babysitter and now her daughter’s new lover, who she believes also murdered somebody else years before. Charlie also has other motivations for wanting to visit, Oxford; a psychologist whom she has found herself romantically drawn to despite being in a steady relationship for seven years. Charlie doesn’t believe Jay is the murderer, yet she discovers a number of suspicious deaths in her past that demand investigation. McDermid spins the story around the tangled relationships of five lesbian women, told predominately through the perspective of two: Charlie and Jay. A large portion of the latter is told through extracts from Jay’s misery memoir, about her tough life growing up and the follow-up she is presently drafting. The investigation often seemed to play second fiddle to the melodrama of these women’s lives, but it’s kept moving forward through an interesting enough plot. And McDermid’s writing is very easy on the eye, keeping the pages turning. The outcome was somewhat telegraphed, but there were a couple of nice twists to offset.

Review of The Quaker by Liam McIlvanney (2018, Harper Collins)

Glasgow, 1969. A group of detectives have spent months trying to catch The Quaker, a killer who has raped and murdered three women. Their investigation has ground to a halt and the media have turned on the team. Senior management decide to send in DI Duncan McCormack, a young, quickly rising detective to the team to review the investigation with a view to learning lessons and wrapping it up. He’s met with resentment. The case was meant to be the making of the team members, instead it’s become a blot on their careers. It doesn’t take McCormack long to spot the errors and new potential leads. Then a new murder is committed and the team have a firm suspect. McCormack is convinced they are chasing the wrong the man, but has difficulty persuading others. They need a conviction and closure. Instead, McCormack is left to solve the murders, though gaining justice may come with a heavy price.

Based loosely on the ‘Bible John’ serial killer case in Glasgow in the late 1960s, The Quaker charts the attempts of the police to catch a man who has raped and killed three woman after taking them to a local dance. Despite his public appearances and thousands of posters littering the city, months after the last death he’s still not been caught. The police have hit a wall. With no new deaths or leads senior management are looking to wrap up an expensive investigation. The story follows DI Duncan McCormack’s attempt to assess what went wrong and his slide into conducting his own investigation of the killings as he spots fresh connections. When a new murder is committed and a new suspect emerges, McCormack senses that it’s a setup, again defying the desired outcome and continuing his pursuit of the real Quaker. The story is fairly conventional police procedural that’s tightly plotted, with a couple of nice twists, and unfolds at a steady clip. McCormack is an interesting ‘loner’ character who has his own secrets, and there’s a strong sense of place, charting the social and geographical changes to Glasgow given the mass slum clearances and building of flats and new towns. Overall, a nicely told, engaging tale of vicious crime and internal police politics and rivalries.

Review of A Treachery of Spies by Manda Scott (2018, Corgi)

Present day and an elderly woman is found shot dead in a car park. To Capitaine Inés Picaut it appears to be a professional hit. The only clue is a business card sown into the lining of the victim’s coat. Picaut and her team discover that the victim's name appears to be Sophie Destivelle and a local film company was making a documentary about her involvement with SOE, a British-American Jedburgh team and the French Marquis in the Jura Mountains in the days leading up the D-Day landings and liberation. Other members of that group’s war-time leaders are present in Orleans, as is a special conference attended by high ranking American intelligence officers. When a second killing takes place of the son of one of the Marquis members, Picaut realises she has two mysteries to solve: who is killing Marquis members and their descendants and what happened during the war to prompt the murders so many years later. The remaining Marquis are not talking, determined to complete unfinished business and discover the identity of the suspected spy within their close knit resistance group. What started in the early 1940s is seemingly about to come to a bloody end.

A Treachery of Spies is the second book in the Capitaine Inés Picaut series, but can be read as a standalone. Manda Scott expertly weaves together two inter-related plots that are separated by seventy years. The first concerns a battle of wits between a master Gestapo agent who cleverly turns resistance members and a group of SOE agents and French Marquis that last much of the war. The resistance cell never quite gets the upper hand, even in victory, and the tight core of leaders are unsure if and who might be a spy. The second charts the present day investigation by Picaut into the assassination of one of SOE agents, Sophie Destivelle, herself turned and turned back again and also an assassin of traitors and collaborators during and after the war. Both threads make for compelling stories in and of themselves, with nicely crafted and well told plots, but when twisted together the result is a page-turning thriller. The characterisation is very nicely done, there’s good historical contextualisation, and the underlying premise in terms of the post-war era is interesting. Scott peppers the plot with twists and turns, and keeps the reader guessing as to the identity of the Marquis traitor and why the killing has resumed. An excellent read to finish up 2019.

Review of Bloody January by Alan Parks (2017, Canongate)

Glasgow, 1973. Detective Harry McCoy is told by a violent criminal in the city’s prison that a young woman is to die by the morning. After a drunken night, and with his new partner in tow, McCoy waits at the bus centre for the young woman’s bus to arrive. When it does a teenage boy shoots the woman dead then turns the gun on himself. The boy worked in the grounds of the Dunlops, a rich, well-connected family, one that is well-known to McCoy. He had a run-in with them a couple of years ago, his former police partner now works security for them, and the mother of his dead child lives in their house. After making a hames of his visit the Dunlops, McCoy’s boss constrains his investigation. McCoy is soon trailing round brothels and homeless hangouts trying to find other leads, but he’s sure the Dunlops are involved somehow even if they appear untouchable and few people are willing to help. He also has other problems, namely a psychotic gang leader, Stevie Cooper, who will occasionally help out his boyhood friend, but always at a heavy price.

Detective Harry McCoy is an anti-hero cop cut from a familiar set of tropes – a man who grew up in institutional care, who’s boyhood friend is a major criminal, who’s own child died young, who has a drink and authority problem, is a Catholic in a sectarian institution, and who regularly strays beyond the bounds of acceptable policing practice. He has a moral compass of sorts and believes in justice, even if it’s occasionally rough in nature. In this first book in the series he’s investigating the murder of a young prostitute who seems to have been catering for violent tastes. He suspects a link to a rich family, but has been warned to stay away. But Harry isn’t very good at following orders and his new partner, Wattie, seems prepared to tolerate his unorthodox methods. It seems, however, that he’s straying too far from the path, both professionally and personally, as he mixes with criminals and prostitutes and habitually gets drunk and takes soft drugs, as well as taking regular beatings. It’s a good job he’s got a semi-understanding boss that he respects. Parks spins the tale in a hardboiled style, keeps the story moving at a decent clip, and does a good job of capturing Glasgow in 1973 and the criminal underbelly of the city. There’s no great surprise in the resolution, but that matters little as it’s as much a tale about the journey as destination. Overall, a well told, dark slice of Scottish noir.

Review of Rather Be The Devil by Ian Rankin (Orion, 2016)

John Rebus is retired but he has a new partner and a file of cold cases to keep himself occupied. One case in particular preys on his mind. Maria Turquand, the promiscuous wife of a wealthy banker, was killed in her hotel room forty years ago. Rebus was on the fringe of the case and now uses his friendship with DI Siobhan Clarke to access old files. Clarke is investigating an attack on Darryl Christie, the new crime lord in the city. DI Malcolm Fox also has an interest in Christie and his extensive money laundering operation and his connections to the activities of a shady financier. A few hours after Rebus talks to an old colleague about the Turquand case the man is dead and a team from Police Scotland parachuted in to investigate, with Fox and Clarke drafted in to help. Rebus immediately starts stepping on toes as he continues his investigation, becoming more intrigued as his cold case and the investigation into Christie’s attack and operations start to blur. Meanwhile, Big Ger Cafferty stirs the pot from edges sensing a chance to profit from his protégé’s troubles.

Rather Be The Devil is the twenty first instalment of the Rebus series. Rather than becoming tired and clichéd, the series still has a freshness and verve. The relationship between Rebus, his former sidekick Siobhan Clarke, and old rival now friend, Malcolm Fox, and his rivalry with Big Ger Cafferty and Darryl Christie, continues to evolve and shift. And Rankin keeps the police procedural elements up-to-date as the organisation, politics and practices of Scottish policing transforms. Beyond the characters and the context, it is the quality of the storytelling that really shines. Rankin’s voice is very engaging, with an excellent blend of present case and continuing series threads, with a strong grounding in the everyday – these are characters and situations that seem real, rather than exceptional or extraordinary. The story in this outing is particularly compelling, investigating a cold case of the murder of vivacious banker’s wife and investigating a current attack against a young crime lord and murder of the last detective to examine the cold case. It’s somewhat unbelievable that there are so many connections between the three events, but Rankin handles these nicely rather than it being a series of clunky coincidences, and they add to rather than detract from story. Overall, an entertaining crime tale and a strong addition to the series.

Review of The Deep Dark Sleep by Craig Russell (Quercus, 2011)

Glasgow, 1955. A body is dredged from the bottom of the River Clyde. The monogrammed cigarette case suggests it is Gentleman Joe Strachan, a pre-war criminal mastermind behind some of the city’s biggest robberies. Strachan had disappeared after a policeman was killed during his final heist. Lennox, a former Canadian commando during the war and journalist, is hired by Strachan’s twin daughters, Isa and Violet, to discover the corpse’s true identity. Since Strachan’s disappearance the twins have received a substantial payment each year which they had assumed was sent by their father. If the body isn’t their father, then they want Lennox to track him down. If it is him, who has been sending them money? Lennox starts to hunt around for clues in the criminal underworld, while also working on a blackmail case involving an American movie star working on a film in the city and surrounds. It seems, however, that someone doesn’t want him to find answers and is prepared to kill to stop his progress.

The Deep Dark Sleep is the third book in the Lennox series set in 1950s Glasgow. Lennox is still haunted by his time as a commando during the war and has wound up in Glasgow, working as a private investigator rather than return to his native Canada. Through guile and favours and he manages to navigate the criminal underworld of the ‘three kings’, while also maintaining friendships with policemen prepared to help him with his cases. As such, he’s the logical choice of PI for those who need difficult cases solved involving some criminal element. In this outing, he’s hired by the twin daughters of the most feared and successful criminal in the city before the war to discover whether a body dredged from the Clyde is their father, and by a solicitor acting on behalf of an American movie star who is being blackmailed over some explicit photographs. While the latter case seems relatively straightforward to resolve, the former soon turns deadly. Someone it seems is prepared to kill to keep the mystery of Gentleman Joe Strachan a mystery. Lennox is an engaging character, 1950s Glasgow is well portrayed, and Russell keeps the tale moving at pace. The twin threads, plus Lennox’s slow romantic pursuit of his landlady, is compelling and entertaining. However, while each thread is interesting, their entwining as the story progressed felt like a somewhat clunky plot device that didn’t ring true. The result was an enjoyable tale that progressed to a seemingly inevitable and staged conclusion.

Review of Whisky in Small Glasses by Denzil Meyrich (Polygon, 2012)

The body of a young woman is washed up on a Scottish beach in the West of Scotland. Detective Inspector Jim Daley is sent from Glasgow to the remote, close-knit town of Kinloch to investigate. There he discovers that the woman was infamous for performing sexual favours for drink and drugs and that her friend and a local club owner have disappeared. Daley and his team start a search while also hunting for other clues, though their task is not aided by the lukewarm reception of the local sub-divisional commander. Also acting as a distraction is the presence of Daley’s wife. She has followed him to the seaside town with her brother-in-law in tow hoping to try and patch things up despite her infidelity and Daley's hair-trigger temper. When the body count rises further pressure is applied by Daley’s ambitious boss. Soon there is much more at stake than Daley’s job and his rocky marriage.

Whisky in Small Glasses is the first in the DCI Daley series set in the West of Scotland. Daley is for the most part calm, collected and reasonable but he also has anger management issues that flair up when stressed. Given the state of his marriage, the pressure from his boss, and a difficult case, he’s never far from snapping. His sidekick is DS Brian Scott, a no-nonsense cop who’s reached his career ceiling. Together they make an interesting pair. Where the story suffers though is with respect to the plotting and telling. Meyrich uses a succession of plot devices to keep the story moving forward, some of which are seem barely credible, such as the backstory and unfolding drama involving the local chief cop, and Daley’s wife following him to the murder location. Moreover, the identity of the killer is strongly telegraphed from about halfway through in what is meant to be a whodunit. This is not helped by the lifeless, workmanlike prose. The result is a fairly weakly told police procedural anchored by a couple of intriguing lead characters.

Review of Dead Water by Ann Cleeves (Macmillan, 2013)

Journalist Jerry Markham has travelled home to Shetland, claiming to be working on a secret story that appears to be related to the energy industry. He’s not long back on the islands when he’s runoff the road and murdered, his body left in a rowing boat in front of the Fiscal’s home. Usually Inspector Jimmy Perez would run the investigation, but he’s still trying to come to terms with the death of his partner and being the carer for her seven year old daughter. Instead, Detective Inspector Willow Reeves is sent from the mainland to head up her first murder investigation. Bought up in a commune on a Western isle, Willow has rebelled against her parents beliefs though she carries some of the lifestyle. Willow and a local sergeant start to trace the movements of Markham and possible motives for his death. The journalist seems to have rubbed a number of people the wrong way before leaving for London under a black cloud, abandoning a pregnant young woman. Only a small protest group were happy with his questions concerning new green energy projects. As Reeves and her team struggle to find convincing leads, Perez starts to take an interest in the case. Slowly coming out his shell as he starts to piece together clues, forming an uneasy alliance with Willow.

Dead Water is the fifth book in the Jimmy Perez Shetland series. After the death of Perez’s partner in the last outing, the detective is at a low ebb, bringing up Fran’s seven year old daughter and thinking of quitting the police. When a journalist is murdered, Detective Inspector Willow Reeves is sent from Aberdeen to lead the investigation. Willow doesn’t seem like the usual kind of detective, seemingly a little laid-back and unconcerned about appearance, but she’s ambitious and disarming. She soon senses that the local Fiscal has a personal connection to the case and the journalist’s former girlfriend, who he’d abandoned whilst pregnant a few years before, is being economical with the truth. The case makes slow progress but gradually works its hooks into Perez, who increasingly takes an active role. In finding his feet, however, Perez habitually takes solo-runs, chasing down leads without consulting Willow creating a little tension between the two that they continually try to smooth over. Cleeves nicely balances the personal dynamics within the police team with the puzzle of the case, creating a character-driven police procedural with plenty of intrigue.  As usual there is a strong sense of place, with the Shetlands performing as more than a backdrop.  The denouement felt a little contrived, but overall an enjoyable and entertaining read.

Review of Pilgrim Soul by Gordon Ferris (Corvus, 2013)

1947, Glasgow. Former policeman, then army major, now crime journalist Douglas Brodie is living in sin with lawyer, Samantha Campbell. When the Jewish community in the city ask Brodie to investigate a series of burglaries, he agrees, needing the cash. He solves the crime, but the thief is killed before he can be apprehended. In turn, the killer is murdered. Unnerving Brodie and the Jewish community are the evidence of links between the victim and the Nazi regime. In the meantime, Sam is asked to travel to Hamburg to take part in the war crimes trials. Brodie took part in the first trials as an investigator and when Sam is due to return for a second stint he’s asked to accompany her to help prepare the current cases. It’s also an opportunity to examine any link between the concentration camps and Glasgow. What he discovers suggests a conspiracy that will have dramatic repercussions. To help crack the case Brodie joins forces with his old police friend, Danny McRae – a man with his own shady past.

Pilgrim Soul is set in Glasgow and Hamburg in the cold winter of 1947. It charts journalist Douglas Brodie’s investigation into a string of burglaries affecting the city’s large Jewish community, the possible presence of former Nazis in the city, and his participation in war crimes trial in Hamburg having previously been involved in earlier trials when in the British army. There’s much to like about the story. Brodie is an engaging character with an interesting back story. There is a strong sense of place and time, with a nice portrait of Glasgow and its social context. The story is well contextualised with respect to the war crimes trials, including the inclusion of some real life Nazi criminals.  The plot, for the most part, is well crafted and interesting, and there’s a strong, steady pace. For the first two thirds of the book it was a solid five star read, despite one obvious telegraphed plot device. What unsettled the book for me, was the arrival of Brodie’s old, pre-war fellow policeman, Danny McRae. Pilgrim Soul is the third book in the Brodie series, as well as the third in the McRae series. In my view, the intersection of the two series was a problem for two reasons. First, the plotline and denouement attached to McRae creates one too many twists that felt overly contrived and unnecessary. The story would have stood perfectly well on its own without McRae being involved. Second, I’ve not read the previous two McRae books, only the Brodie ones, but I now have a fairly full precis of what happens, including their resolutions that’ll probably ruining any mystery to those books if I read them. Nonetheless, Pilgrim Soul was an entertaining and interesting read.

Review of Out of Bounds by Val McDermid (Little, Brown; 2016)

DCI Karen Pirie is still coming to terms with the untimely death of her partner, Phil. Unable to sleep she walks the streets at night and throws herself into her work as head of the Historic Cases Unit during the day. Her latest investigation is a familial DNA match from a joyrider with the perpetrator of a rape and murder twenty years previously. It should be an open and shut case, but there’s a tricky complication. At the same time, Pirie takes an interest in a contemporary case, one she has no right to get involved in: the apparent suicide of a disturbed man. Pirie thinks it’s murder and piquing her interest further is the unsolved murder of the man’s mother twenty five years earlier, a victim of a bomb on a small, private plane. She starts to investigate both, putting herself on a potential collision course with her a colleague, her boss, and an influential third party. Not that this fazes Pirie; all she is interested in is justice and she doesn’t mind ruffling feathers and undermining her own position to get it.

Out of Bounds is the fourth book in the Inspector Karen Pirie cold case series set in Scotland, though I read it as a standalone. In this outing Pirie is investigating three cases, two of them interlinked, and also trying to help some Syrian refugees find their feet in their new home in Edinburgh. None of the cases are straightforward, complicated by messy family relations, and they all have the potential to get Pirie in trouble with her boss and the press. And she only has the jurisdiction to examine one of them. McDermid does a nice job of winding the cases and the refugee thread around each other and keeping the pacing taut and steady. There are a handful of plot devices that felt a little contrived and murderer in one of the cases was well telegraphed despite a couple of attempts at misdirection. But none of that really mattered as the key to the story is Karen Pirie, an indomitable, engaging, driven and wounded spirit who is willing to cut corners and rub people up the wrong way if it gets her a result, and McDermid’s engaging voice. The result is an interesting and entertaining police procedural.

Review of His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet (Contraband, 2015)

1869. The Macrae’s lot in life has not been good.  Eeking out a living on a croft on the west coast of Scotland the mother died in child-birth leaving the stoic father to bring up four children and the family are being persecuted by a neighbour who is also the local constable.  Roddy Macrae has always been an outsider child, intelligent, but somewhat naïve and often lost in his own world.  He makes poor decisions and bad luck seems to follow him.  He eventually concludes that the only way to help the rest of his family break the cycle of torment they are suffering is to murder the constable. This is he does with calm indifference, also killing two others.  He admits to the crimes and there is no doubt that he is guilty.  However, his court advocate is convinced that Roddy was delusional when he committed the acts and sets out to convince the jury to acquit his client.  He is a lone voice though and the public is baying for justice.

His Bloody Project follows the life and trial of Roddy Macrae, a young man living in abject poverty on the west coast of Scotland whose family is being persecuted.  Macrae admits to murdering the local constable and two of his family members in cold blood.  Burnet tells the story as a factual account as if put together through historical research.  In the first two thirds, the tale is told from the perspective of Roddy Macrae who at the behest of his court advocate writes down his account as to the events leading up to the murder and the act itself.  The last third swaps to an account of the trial gleaned from court documents, various newspaper articles, and a book published by a criminal anthropologist who examined Macrae.  The style throughout is a somewhat dispassionate narrative, with Macrae’s account being rather dry and unemotive, as is the more historical account of the author.  Beyond the dry style there were a couple of things that niggled. The first was the supposed first person account of Roddy Macrae, which is far too mature and polished for a seventeen-year old crofter who left school early, regardless of how intelligent he is. The second was the silence in the Macrae’s narrative and in particular the court proceedings with regards to his sister.  Overall, an interesting but somewhat flat story.

Review of The Malice of Waves by Mark Douglas-Home

Cal McGill works as a sea detective, trying to determine where bodies that enter the water might travel to.  He’s often hired by families seeking to find the resting place of a loved one.  In this case, it’s David Wheeler, an English father who is hunting for answers in relation to the disappearance of his son, Max, from a small island in the Outer Hebrides.  The boy had been spending a night alone camping on Priest’s Island when he vanished, his body never found.  Wheeler is convinced his son was murdered by a local and has become obsessed with finding his killer. Every year he has sent an investigator with a different skill set to try and crack the case.  The arrival of the investigator along with Wheeler and his three daughters to mark the anniversary of the disappearance sets the small community on edge as they rally round to protect their reputation from what they feel are unfounded accusations. The question is, can McGill succeed where others have failed?

The Malice of Waves is the third instalment in the sea detective series. It’s not easy to find a fresh angle in crime fiction, but Douglas-Home manages to carve out a little niche with an oceanographer who specialises in tracking bodies lost at sea. In this case Cal McGill is drafted in to help find out what happened to a boy who disappeared from a small island five year’s previously. His presence in the local community is resented and family are hardly welcoming either. He’s joined in the Outer Hebrides by Helen Jamieson, a police officer pretending to an ordinary member of the public trying to get over a failed relationship. While Cal rubs the locals and family up the wrong way while trying to get a handle on the local currents, Helen makes friends with the locals by the hanging around the local tea shop. Douglas-Home creates a strong sense of place and immerses the reader in the tense relations between the locals and family.  There’s nice characterisation of the villagers and the Wheeler family, with both Cal and Helen being appealing leads. The pace is steady and unrushed and the plot has plenty of blinds and misdirection.  While the main thread is nicely constructed, the plotline with Pinkee Pryke, a poacher of bird eggs, felt like a plot device and was a little underdeveloped and not fully resolved.  Overall, an engaging and atmospheric detective story.

Review of Even Dogs in the Wild by Ian Rankin (2015, Orion)

A senior lawyer has been murdered.  It’s appears to be a robbery gone wrong until a threatening note is found.  Then a shot is taken at Big Ger Cafferty, an Edinburgh crime boss who has received an identical note.  DI Siobhan Clarke is investigating both cases, but Cafferty will only deal with Rebus and the old cop is bought out of retirement as a ‘consultant’.  It doesn’t take Rebus long to pick up the scent of an old crime being revenged.  Cafferty has other worries as well.  A notorious Glasgow criminal and his gang are making waves in the city and Daryl Christie, his one-time lieutenant, is playing games.  DI Malcolm Fox has been assigned local liaison to a surveillance team from Glasgow, but he’s an unwanted team member and his fondness for procedure soon causes friction.  With tensions rising, Rebus, Clarke and Fox work to stop dog eating dog.

Even Dogs in the Wild is the twentieth book in the Rebus series.  One problem with long-running series is maintaining the freshness of the plots and interest in the characters.  Rankin suffers neither problem.  In this outing the plot consists of two separate investigations – an incursion into Edinburgh by a Glasgow-based gang and the deaths of a lawyer, a lottery winner and a potshot at crime boss, Big Ger Cafferty.  What joins the two plot lines are the involvement of principle characters of DI Clarke, DI Fox, recently retired Rebus, and Cafferty, and good old fashioned detective work.  Rankin keeps the parallel stories both ticking along at a clip and nicely balances the investigations with the evolving relationships between the characters.  The result is an entertaining and enjoyable police procedural that taps into current events and the exposure of past ones.  The only bit that felt a little underdeveloped was the end, which seemed to tail off and left untold the aftermath and fallout of the cases.  Nonetheless, another strong addition to the series.

Review of The Long Glasgow Kiss by Craig Russell (Quercus, 2010)

Glasgow in the mid-1950s.  A bookie with his hand in a number of pies is bludgeoned to death.  Lennox, a private investigator who’s been known to do jobs for the Three Kings who run the Glasgow criminal underworld, was with the victim’s daughter at the time of the murder.  One of the Kings asks him to look into the case and to also keep an eye on an up-and-coming boxer who is about to fight for the European title who’s been receiving threats.  Lennox balances the job with searching for the missing brother of a famous actress who had thought he had a sure-fire way to get rich.  Lennox keeps stumbling across references to Largo, but nobody knows who he is, though there’s a big-shot American lawman in town also seeking him.  Both cases have Lennox stretched, especially since there are forces at play who’d sooner he dropped his snooping and are prepared to use violence to achieve their ends.

The Long Glasgow Kiss is the second book in the Lennox series.  Russell transplants the PI genre across the pond and adapts it for 1950s Glasgow to good effect.  It helps that Lennox is Canadian, with his street-smarts and fighting skills honed through some of the bloodiest battles of the Second World War and black market in peace time.  As an outsider he can operate across sectarian and criminal territories and he can hold his own in a tight spot, and he can occupy the traditional genre figure that might seem false on a Scot.  Russell though is a native and his knowledge of the geography and history of the city is evident in the story's strong sense of place and time.  Indeed, the narrative captures well the hard edge and criminal underbelly of post-war Glasgow, its social divides and landscape.  In this outing, Russell weaves together a handful of engaging and intriguing plotlines centred around a murdered bookie, a missing man, a new shady operator, and a threatened boxer.  It’s fair to say that there’s a lot going on but there’s never a sense of getting lost, with Russell keeping a firm hand on the tiller leading to a well figured denouement.  Certainly, Lennox manages to get out of scrapes that really should have seen his demise, but one expects as much in tough-guy PI tales.  The result is a taut, entertaining tale that kept the pages turning.  It’s always a good sign when the first thought on finishing a book is, ‘I need to get my hands on the next in the series’.

Review of The Man in the Queue by Josephine Tey (1929, Penguin)

Waiting in line to catch a theatre show a man falls to the floor dead, a knife in his back.  Those around him claim to have little recollection of the man or if anyone approached him. Inspector Alan Grant is assigned the case, which quickly proves difficult to solve.  Even identifying the man is not straightforward.  Slowly, however, Grant makes progress, but it’s not at all clear he’s on the right trail.  

The Man in the Queue was published in 1929 with Josephine Tey using the pseudonym of Gordon Daviot.  It was her first published crime novel.  It’s a somewhat curious book being highly uneven in its telling (with some overlong descriptive pieces that little move the story on, as well as quite astute observation), utilising some fairly clumsy plot devices (e.g., no labels on or identifying material in his clothes), and some parts making little sense (e.g., not re-interviewing an actress, using description of victim rather than circulating a photo or sketch of his face, not arresting the prime suspect at first opportunity when cornered).  Moreover, the book has some fairly racist undertones (e.g., Grant knew … the Dago’s rat-like preference for the sewers rather than the open’; as well other assignments of characteristics on the basis of appearance).  The ending, in particular, is very weak with a hurried denouement which feels contrived and awkwardly staged.  All of this was somewhat of a surprise given the high regard in which Tey is held by crime fiction aficionados (in 1990 the CWA selected The Daughters of Time as the greatest crime novel of all time and The Franchise Affair came in eleventh).  However, reading other reviews the consensus seems to be that The Man in the Queue is her weakest outing and is definitely not the one a new to Tey reader should try first. 

Review of Strange Loyalties by William McIlvanney (1991, Canongate)

After the death of his younger brother, Scott, Laidlaw decides to take a week’s break from the Glasgow police force to do a little private investigating.  Scott’s death seems like a straightforward misadventure, stepping drunkenly in front of an unsuspecting motorist.  However, Laidlaw is puzzled as to why his brother would have been so careless.  He therefore sets about trying to piece together a life that he barely knows despite being kin, though nobody else shares his desire to rake over the past.  Moreover, his new obsession is threatening his present relationship.  Nonetheless, Laidlaw has set off on a path of discovery and he’s determined to uncover the truth regardless of consequence.

Strange Loyalties is the third book in the excellent Laidlaw trilogy (you can find my reviews of the first two books here and here).  Whereas the first two are written in the third person, for this more personal outing McIlvanney swaps to a first person perspective, providing a richer perspective on the complexities and inner reflections of Laidlaw, a man driven by the need to find the truth and deliver justice, but burdened with an in-built self-destructive streak.  What separates McIlvanney’s crime fiction from most is, I think, its literary sensibilities.  While the stories are very much of the crime genre and are dark and gritty tales, they are crafted with prose and are rich in philosophical reflection.  Indeed, the central question at the heart of the tales is ‘what does this all mean?’ rather than simply ‘who did this?’  And so it is with Strange Loyalties, with Laidlaw trying to come to terms with the untimely death of his brother, picking away at questions that no-one wants answered except him.  While the telling is a little stilted at first, it soon finds its groove.  And while it is not the most cheery of tales it is compelling and haunting with Laidlaw seeking a truth that he knows he does not want to know.

Review of Lennox by Craig Russell (2009, Quercus)

Rather than heading back to Canada after being demobbed, Lennox settles in Glasgow, creating a role for himself within the underworld as a private investigator.  In the spring of 1953 one of the McGahern twins, a pair of vicious gangsters, is murdered.  The second twin wants Lennox to find his brother’s killer, but shortly after he’s also found dead.  The three kings, the crime bosses who run the city’s three main gangs, want the killers found.  The police think Lennox is a likely suspect.  A little probing reveals that there is far more to the  deaths of the twins than first meets the eye.  It seems that a fourth criminal gang is operating in the city and they’re well organized.  Moreover, they’re leaving a trail of bodies in their wake, erasing possible leads before Lennox gets a chance to talk to them.  With the police turning the heat up against the three kings and Lennox, he tries to keep one step ahead of the law and to run down the McGahern’s killers.

Lennox is a gritty PI tale set in Glasgow not long after the end of the Second World War.  Naturally cynical, hardened by the war and tenacious, Lennox is well able to look after himself on the tough streets of the Scottish city, offering services to shady characters, including the three kings, the rival leaders of the main three gangs.  Russell tells the tale of Lennox’s attempt to solve the murders of the McGahern twins in a first person voice that is genuinely engaging and brings 1950s Glasgow to life.  Moreover, the plot rattles along a jaunty pace, with plenty of action, tension, and twists and turns.  The story is all a little far-fetched, especially the denouement, but it little matters as it’s a rip-roaring read.  Overall, an entertaining tale that introduces a tough-guy, wise-cracking PI who has some depth and substance.

Review of Natural Causes by James Oswald (Penguin, 2012)

Newly promoted Detective Inspector Tony McLean has been living his life in limbo.  His finacee died a couple of years ago and his grandmother, who raised him since he was four after the death of his parents, has been in a coma for 18 months.  Travelling home one evening he spots flashing blue lights outside a house and stops to offer assistance.  A prominent city resident has been murdered, but the investigation is in hand and he’s sent on his way.  The following day he’s called to a building site where the body of a young girl has been discovered, apparently murdered in a strange ritual some sixty years previously.  McLean is oddly affected by the case and makes it his priority, despite being drawn back into the first case as pressure within his station mounts.  Then there’s a breakthrough with the killer seemingly found having taken his own life, only for a very similar murder to happen shortly afterwards.  Against his rationality, McLean suspects some link between the long dead girl, the deaths, and the supernatural, and with the death toll mounting he and his colleagues are under pressure to solve the case.

Natural Causes in the first book in the Detective McLean series set in Edinburgh.  The tale is a police procedural thriller with a supernatural bent.  Oswald has an engaging voice and he keeps the pace and action high, with plenty of twists and turns and a fair dose of emotional heart-tugging with respect to McLean’s personal life.  McLean is the typical wounded cop and Oswald quickly has you on his side, and there is a decent amount of character development as the story unfolds.  His colleagues are also nicely penned and there’s a good sense of place with Edinburgh forming the backdrop.  The plot is an entertaining yarn as long as one can suspend disbelief, with the procedural elements as much a fantasy as the supernatural heart of the tale.  Nonetheless, the story rattles along, with the body count rising as it makes its way to its denouement.  I’ll certainly be checking out the next book in the series, The Book of Souls.