GUY WARE - THE FAT OF FED BEASTS (2015)

Synopsis/blurb….

Monday lunchtime: a bank is being robbed. The gunmen tell everyone to get down on the floor, but an old man refuses. Behind him in the queue is Rada Kalenkova, an investigator for the Office of Assessment, recording everything she sees. Shots are fired and a woman is killed. Or maybe two. But Rada ignores the murders and pursues the old man instead.

Nothing about the robbery or the putative killings makes sense. The robbers might be police. The bank manager denies anyone was hurt, despite the blood on the walls. Every subsequent enquiry leads towards Edward Likker, a renowned fixer. But Likker is dead.

The Fat of Fed Beasts is an ambitious literary mix of existential uncertainty, murder, bureaucracy, unreliable father figures and disaffected policemen. It asks why we do what we do, whether it matters, and what, if anything, our lives are worth. And it’s funny.

‘Ware has an uncluttered prose style and a willingness to stretch the boundaries of fiction. His sensibility is finely tuned to those grey areas of experience where identities shift, where people forget who they really are. No other writer springs to mind as a ready comparison to Ware: already he has defined a unique thematic territory.’ AIDEN O’REILLY, The Short Review

I had fairly high expectations for this book and I whilst I enjoyed it and it was interesting and well written, by the time I got to the end I was left scratching my head, wondering what had happened and why, as well as what it all meant. Which the more I think about it, may have been the author’s intention all along.

We have the bank robbery mentioned above and Rada one of the team from the Office of Assessment breaches protocol by pursuing a live witness, when her employment is strictly concerned with the dead. The team at the Office includes, boss Theo – soon to be retiring, Rada, her half-brother – D. and Alex. D. despite his junior position has a high opinion of himself and is jostling for Theo’s position once he has gone. Their function is to look into the lives of the dead and make a recommendation as to onward destination – heaven, hell or limbo.

We have multiple narrators, which when they jump in, it wasn’t immediately apparent to me who was speaking and who’s head we are inside. This includes one of the bank robbers. The robbers themselves are an interesting bunch insofar as they are three police officers, one of whom is retiring in a few days. The others have also stalled in their careers.

Rada pursues the live witness. The robbery is investigated by a detective and also looked into by Rada’s brother. One of police officers-cum-bank robber fears the robbery resulted in a couple of deaths and there is mistrust and suspicion among the thieves. The one thief who knows claims she shot through the ceiling to quieten a panicking witness, though it was eerily silent after the second shot. The bank claim no-one died, but that’s an awfully big blood stain running up the wall in the bank. D. thinks he can profit professionally from his sister’s unprofessional behaviour.

Her suspension from work means her case-load is divided up between her colleagues. And introduces the mysterious and feared Lopez to the office. One of Rada’s cases is pursued by Alex and is the suicide of a lawyer - Rodkin who killed himself by sawing his throat with a bread knife. He is connected to Likker, a dead man, who was his client. Our bank robbery witness was attempting to withdraw cash from Likker’s account. Likker and Lopez knew Rada and D.’s father, who perhaps wasn't who he seemed to be and also died in unusual circumstances, tagged as suicide.

Things get confusingly resolved in our dead lawyer’s basement flat where Alex had been held prisoner for a few days by Kurt. (Who the hell was Kurt?) In attendance are Lopez, Alex, Rada, D., Theo, our investigating police officer and our bank robbers. Something dramatic happens and life then goes on.

Interesting and enjoyable, but my enjoyment was tempered by not really comprehending what it all meant. A re-read in a year’s time might offer me a better understanding.

Great characters. We share some of Rada’s home life, with her husband, Gary and their son. Her half-brother lives with them as does Alex. D. thinks Gary’s an idiot. Gary is too blinkered to comprehend this. Alex and D. don’t gel.

Some great lines dropped in throughout, one of which stayed with me…….

In life, I find the secret is to plan nothing, to want nothing, just to see what happens. What is offered. Such a life requires strength and stealth and is harder than it looks.

Oscillating between a 3 and a 4. On balance probably a 3.

Guy Ware has a book of short stories previously published – You Have 24 Hours to Love Us.

Thanks to Tabitha at Salt Publishing for my copy of this.      

DANE COOLIDGE - TEXANS DIE HARD (1936)

With nothing yet logged in the library from 1936, though I’m fairly sure that in a few month’s time I would have had a candidate for this monthly meme, most probably Graham Greene’s A Gun for Sale. With that in mind and loathe to buy anything I had a hunt around the net for something that would do the job. After downloading a William Faulkner story The Brooch, I eventually settled on a copy of Western Fiction Monthly for April 1936 and the complete novel – Texans Die Hard by Dane Coolidge. 

I have long held the belief that a lot of Western novels are in fact crime fiction albeit with a specific back-drop. They probably aren't mysteries, insofar as the villain or outlaw is usually known to the reader and the book is primarily concerned with bringing him to justice whether through the courts, or as is more likely through some more immediate frontier-type justice at the end of a couple of smoking gun barrels.

Anyway – I've made my case for my inclusion in Rich’s 1936 monthly meme at his Past Offences blog. See what other participants read or watched here. 

Texans Die Hard…….well an okay read but no more than that.

We have a cattle ranch operation on the banks of the Rio Grande. Buff Hall is the rancher and he’s primarily concerned with getting his cattle out of Mexico and back into Texas. Things are volatile south of the border with a revolution in progress and Pancho Villa trying to establish some authority and the villainous one-eyed Fausto Parral keen on disrupting things and kidnapping Buff Hall’s daughter into the bargain. He’s seemingly undeterred by the fact that his frequent letters to Anitra are torn into pieces unread.

We have the Texas Rangers in attendance and a bit of romance between the desirable daughter and the capable Ranger …. Winchester Irons. Another plot twist involves a rival rancher, the unscrupulous and cruel Pony Deal, the man who stole Hall’s wife and who may have less than step-fatherly designs on the daughter also.

There was the usual gun-play, a few chases, a kidnapping, some cattle rustling, some double-crossing, corruption, reneging, some rebellious Mexicans and some vengeful Mexican widows with a thirst for American blood, and more than a few border crossings…..to south, to north , to south, to north…….so many, I kind of felt I was watching a game of tennis at times. My neck was aching by the end of this one.

Does the course of true love triumph in the end and does the unscrupulous dirty one-eyed snake, Fausto Parral get his comeuppance?  What do you think!  

Not rushing to read more from the prolific Coolidge but it served its purpose.

3 from 5       

Dane Coolidge wrote over 40 novels in his life-time. He was born in Massachusetts in 1873 and died in 1940.

There is an author biography for Dane Coolidge at the Texas State Historical Association. Here.

There were 3 other short stories included in the April edition of this magazine and in the interests of completion I read them all. The full magazine comprised the following:

A Brand New Complete Novel

"Texans Die Hard" by Dane Coolidge, pp. 6-85 - PDF

Short Stories

Fighting Sheriff by H.C. Wire, pp. 86-96 - PDF

Thieves' Rendezvous by Raymond S. Spears, pp. 97-103 - PDF

Manhunter by Eugene Cunningham, pp. 104-130 - PDF

Cover by J.W. Scott - PDF

I downloaded my copy from UNZ.org. You can click on the link and get yours here. 

As a further aside, I did have a look on various places around the internet to see if a standalone copy of Texans Die Hard was available, but couldn't find anything, so perhaps it didn't see the light of day on its own.

There was a note at the bottom of the first page advising that the novel would appear in a few months as a $2 book and that readers of the magazine could obtain it for 15c.

Another curiosity for me were the adverts within the magazine. Call me sexist if you like, but I was surprised at the number of them offering relief for period pains. I would have imagined that the target audience for Westerns tales would have been mainly men. I may have a few niggling ailments myself, but period pains isn't one of them.

2 BY RYAN BRACHA

Ryan Bracha is an English author who I haven't yet tried.

There's about 6 different pieces from him on the Kindle.
As well as these two, I have....

Tomorrow's Chip Paper 

The Banjo String Snapped but the Band Played On 

Bogies, and other equally messed up tells of love, lust, drugs and grandad porn.

Twelve Mad Men, which is a collaborative novel in conjunction with 11 other authors, including blog favourites Paul D. Brazill, Keith Nixon, Les Edgerton and Gerard Brennan.

His writing philosophy is as follows (lifted from his website) .......... I live to tell stories. Naughty ones, nice ones, funny ones and sad ones. Preferably funny ones though. If something bad happens, my general feeling is 'Ah well, at least it's a story to tell the grandkids one day'. If something good happens, I'll tell everybody I know that story. Everything that will ever happen to you at any point in your life, is always going to be a story to tell at another point in your life. If you view it like that then the chances are you'll enjoy your life a little bit more. Like the time I went to a stag party in Bruges, Belgium. I got too drunk and missed the boat home, spent the night being dragged from pillar to post by the Belgian police, spent so much more money than I ever should have, and got lost in a foreign country for about four hours. Twice. Yeah, at the time it was awful, but the second I landed back on home soil, it was the best story I could have ever lived. Stories make the world go round, they keep us entertained and they make good use of our imagination.

He has a website over here.

Paul Carter is a Dead Man

In 2009 a bomb exploded, killing over 400 British citizens, including three generations of heir to the throne. Religious extremists took responsibility and the country went into meltdown. The British government was overthrown, and its troops withdrawn from overseas. The one-time empire closed its doors to the rest of the world. Law enforcement as it was no longer existed. The power was returned to the British people, and criminals were placed in online public courts for twenty four hours, to be judged. 

The sentence for murder, death. 
The sentence for anti-British behaviour, death. 
The sentence for swearing, death. 

In 2014 Paul Carter kills a man, and is now on the run. The thing is, Paul is smart. He's had enough of the new regime, and he's not the only one. He finds himself as an accidental revolutionary, and the voice of the disillusioned masses. He must learn to embrace the responsibilty that has been thrust into his lap, and kick hard against a system which has failed everybody. 

Paul Carter is a Dead Man is a horrifying glimpse into the future from the Amazon best-selling author of Strangers Are Just Friends You Haven't Killed Yet and is set to be the first book of the Dead Man trilogy.

Strangers are Just Friends you haven't Killed Yet

"You don't get into this game if you have any appreciation for morality, believe me"

Some kind words by other authors...

"Not your typical thriller by any stretch of the imagination." - Keith Nixon, author of 'The Fix'

"His enthusiasm, insightful characterisation and understanding of what motivates flawed people drives his story forward with force and pulls you into his world. And what a world it is." - Mark Wilson, author of 'Bobby's Boy' and 'Naebody's Hero'

"Reading this book was like watching a flake of snow, slowly rolling down a hillside. Before you realize what is happening it bets bigger and bigger until it slams you in the chest. You are carried along by the weight and brilliance of it, gladly allowing it to carry you off into oblivion." - Craig Furchtenicht, author of 'Dimebag Bandits'

"Incredibly funny and bitter and in places sad. Bracha is a genuinely talented writer..." - Martin Stanley, author of 'The Gamblers' and 'The Hunters'

Here's the blurb...

What do you get if you cross a French sex addict hitman, a self righteous left wing blogger with a spam problem, a racist bar room regular and his penchant for porn, an American gangster with a lot of reflecting to do, a small time journalist who dreams of the big time, a weak-willed loner with a Victorian lion hunter alter-ego, a flamboyant PR guru and his devilish plans, a very recently unemployed call centre drone, an old man with a hell of a grudge, and A LOT, of dead bodies? You get this.

The naked corpse of a young man is discovered with his throat sliced open on a cool autumn morning in a park in Sheffield, northern England. By an elderly dog-walker, as usual. He is the first of a rapidly increasing number of seemingly random killings in the city, all in that same way. This leads to a frenzy of media and public speculation, where everybody is a suspect, and everybody has an opinion. Daisy is pointing the finger at the media, rookie journalist David is dreaming of future awards for his coverage of the whole thing, and Terry blames the Asians.

What's actually happening is a far more sinister affair which threatens to spiral out of control. Across the city Tom, call centre outlaw, cast out for his lack of respect for faceless voices, is drinking and snorting himself into a collision course with some very very bad people indeed, how it will end, well that depends on how much of an outlaw Tom's prepared to be.

Strangers Are Just Friends You Haven't Killed Yet is a funny, satirical, sexy, and very violent tale of poverty, addiction, the fickle finger of fame, love and questionable mental health.


Next time you'll maybe want to look that gift horse in the mouth.

LOGGING THE LIBRARY - PART TWENTY-NINE

First, second and third glance at this tub and I'm liking the look of it.....a top 50 I reckon.

Top tub 29!

Henri Charriere, Charles Willeford, David Karp, Michael Stone, William P. McGivern

David Karp 1953 book

One of a 4 book PI series

William P. McGivern - 50's book.

Last Hoke Moseley book from Charles Willeford

John Le Carre, Michael Stone, Henning Mankell, Peter Corris, Garry Disher,

Le Carre standalone from the 60's

First Streeter PI book.

Australian Wyatt series book.

Charles Willeford x 2, Andrew Vachss, Martyn Waites, Chris Wiltz,

Late 50's Willeford.

First Hoke Moseley book.

Jim Thompson, Paul Thomas, Joe Gores, William Boyd, plus a Vietnam collaboration novel.

Jim Thompson - 1970

Short stories

First in Gores' DKA series

Len Deighton, Henry Porter, Lisa Gardner, 2 x Thomas Perry,

Perry stand-alone novel

Jane Whitfield series book.

First in the Harry Palmer series

Boris Starling, Charles McCarry, Robert B. Parker, Brian M. Wiprud, Thomas Perry

Thomas Perry again!

Spenser number 27 from Parker.

Humourous US crime from Brian M. Wiprud

Jon A. Jackson, Niall Griffiths, Geoffrey Beattie, Richard Stark, Colin Harrison

New York crime/thriller

18th entry in Donald Westlake's Parker series of books

1977 first entry in Jackson's Detroit set series

Anthony Frewin, Norman Green, Martin Booth, Deon Meyer, Thomas Perry

Might as well be Thomas Perry tub.

A bit of Norman Green

Perry, Perry - hot stuff, Dan Fesperman, Tony Black, Robert Crais,

Dan Simmons x 2, Norman Green again

Simon Kernick, Sean Cregan - both English authors.

Highlights......Charles Willeford obviously, the Len Deighton book is a series opener. I'm a fan of Thomas Perry and ought to read more from him. Tony Black, Dan Fesperman, Michael Stone and Dan Simmons - all look great.

Lowlights..... what lowlights?

THE FULL 50.......

AUTHOR		TITLE	YEAR	SERIES	FICTION/NON
BEATTIE	GEOFFREY	THE SHADOWS OF BOXING: PRINCE NASEEM HAMED AND THOSE HE LEFT BEHIND	2002		N
BLACK	TONY	GUTTED	2009	GD2	F
BOOTH	MARTIN	THE AMERICAN	1991		F
BOYD	WILLIAM	ON THE YANKEE STATION	1981		F
CHARRIERE	HENRI	BANCO	1973		N
CORRIS	PETER	AFTERSHOCK	1992	CH15	F
CRAIS	ROBERT	THE WATCHMAN	2007	JP1	F
CREGAN	SEAN	THE LEVELS	2010		F
DEIGHTON	LEN	THE IPCRESS FILE	1962	HP1	F
DISHER	GARRY	CROSSKILL	1995	W4	F
FESPERMAN	DAN	THE PRISONER OF GUANTANAMO	2006		F
FREWIN	ANTHONY	LONDON BLUES	1997		F
GARDNER	LISA	HIDE	2007	DDW2	F
GORES	JOE	DEAD SKIP	1972	DKAF1	F
GREEN	NORMAN	THE ANGEL OF MONTAGUE STREET	2003		F
GREEN	NORMAN	THE LAST GIG	2008	AM1	F
GRIFFITHS	NIALL	WRECKAGE	2005		F
HARRISON	COLIN	RISK	2009		F
JACKSON	JON A.	THE DIEHARD	1977	DSM1	F
KARP	DAVID	ONE	1953		F
KERNICK	SIMON	SEVERED	2007		F
LE CARRE	JOHN	A SMALL TOWN IN GERMANY	1968		F
MANKELL	HENNING	THE DOGS OF RIGA	1992	KW2	F
McCARRY	CHARLES	OLD BOYS	2004	PC6	F
McGIVERN	WILLIAM P.	ROGUE COP	1954		F
MEYER	DEON	DEAD BEFORE DYING	1999		F
PARKER	ROBERT B.	HUGGER MUGGER	2000	S27	F
PERRY	THOMAS	VANISHING ACT	1994	JW1	F
PERRY	THOMAS	NIGHTLIFE	2006		F
PERRY	THOMAS	DANCE FOR THE DEAD	1996	JW2	F
PERRY	THOMAS	DEATH BENEFITS	2001		F
PERRY	THOMAS	FIDELITY	2008		F
PERRY	THOMAS	SHADOW WOMAN	1997	JW3	F
PORTER	HENRY	A SPY'S LIFE	2001	RH1	F
RIVERS/HUDSON	GAYLE/JAMES	THE FIVE FINGERS	1978		F
SIMMONS	DAN	HARD FREEZE	2002	JK2	F
SIMMONS	DAN	HARD AS NAILS	2003	JK3	F
STARK	RICHARD	BACKFLASH	1998	P18	F
STARLING	BORIS	VODKA	2004		F
STONE	MICHAEL	A LONG REACH	1997	S2	F
STONE	MICHAEL	THE LOW END OF NOWHERE	1996	S1	F
THOMAS	PAUL	FINAL CUT	1999		F
THOMPSON	JIM	NOTHING BUT A MAN	1970		F
VACHSS	ANDREW	BLUE BELLE	1988	B3	F
WAITES	MARTYN	MARY'S PRAYER	1997	SL1	F
WILLEFORD	CHARLES	THE WAY WE DIE NOW	1988	HM4	F
WILLEFORD	CHARLES	MIAMI BLUES	1984	HM1	F
WILLEFORD	CHARLES	THE BLACK MASS OF BROTHER SPRINGER	1958		F
WILTZ	CHRIS	A DIAMOND BEFORE YOU DIE	1987	NR2	F
WIPRUD	BRIAN M.	CROOKED	2006		F

R. SCOTT MACKEY - COURAGE BEGINS (2015)

Synopsis/blurb…..

Garrett and Tiffanie Bate had it all—youth, money, and a perfect marriage. Until Tiffanie is killed in a suspicious accident. Neither the police nor the insurance investigators can prove she was murdered and the case turns cold. Two years later the insurance company asks an intern—former college professor turned private eye Ray Courage—to reopen the investigation. He uncovers little new evidence to support suspicions that Garrett killed his wife for the insurance money. Garrett has the perfect alibi—hundreds of witnesses that place him more than two hours from the scene of Tiffanie’s death. Ray knows he’s missing something. But what? As his search for the truth unfolds, Ray’s life is put in jeopardy and he realizes his adversary is someone who’ll kill before he’ll be caught. In this prequel to Courage Matters, Ray Courage begins his private investigation career, displaying the skills, abilities and sense of humor that have made him a fan favorite around the world.

Courage Begins is an 85 page novella from new-to-me author R. Scott Mackey. The author’s debut novel Courage Matters sits after this in his Ray Courage series.

I enjoyed this introduction to a new investigator. We had some sense of his character and background revealed to us during our case and there was enough there to encourage me to want to read more about him. The Sacramento setting also appealed to me.

We had a decent plot here and I was interested to see how our former college professor unravelled it when more experienced investigators had failed before him. Garrett Bate was cocky, confident and pretty sure he was home free after the suspicious death of his wife a couple of years previously. He was also over a million dollars richer. Courage starts off sedately enough, poking around, innocently asking questions. A mention of something maybe halfway through or a bit beyond, set an alarm bell ringing in my head and whilst I was correct, the author added a twist which I hadn't seen coming.

Overall, entertaining without being the best book ever, but I was satisfied and as a result intend to get to Courage Matters sometime soon. 

Courage Resurrected follows-on after that.

4 from 5

R. Scott Mackey has his author website here.

Review copy received from the author.

LAWRENCE BLOCK - THE CRIME OF OUR LIVES (2015)

Synopsis/blurb….

An MWA Grand Master tells it straight:

Fredric Brown: “When I read Murder Can Be Fun, I had a bottle of bourbon on the table and every time Brown’s hero took a drink, I had a snort myself. This is a hazardous undertaking when in the company of Brown’s characters, and, I’ve been given to understand, would have been just as dangerous around the author himself. By the time the book was finished, so was I.”

Raymond Chandler: “You have to wonder how he got it so right. He spent a lot of time in the house—working, reading, writing letters. He saw to his wife, who required a lot of attention in her later years. And when he did get out, you wouldn’t find him walking the mean streets. La Jolla, it must be noted, was never much for mean streets.”

Evan Hunter: “In his mid-seventies, after a couple of heart attacks, an aneurysm, and a siege of cancer that had led to the removal of his larynx, Evan wrote Alice in Jeopardy. And went to work right away on Becca in Jeopardy, with every intention of working his way through the alphabet. Don’t you love it? Here’s a man with one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel, and he’s perfectly comfortable launching a twenty-six book series.”

Donald E. Westlake’s Memory: “Here’s the point: Don’s manuscript arrived, and we had dinner and put the kid to bed, and I started reading. And my wife went to bed, and I stayed up reading, and after a while I forgot I was having a heart attack, and just kept reading until I finished the book around dawn. And somewhere along the way I became aware that my friend Don, who’d written a couple of mysteries and some science fiction and his fair share of soft-core erotica, had just produced a great novel.”

Charles Willeford: “Can a self-diagnosed sociopath be at the same time an intensely moral person? Can one be a sociopath, virtually unaware of socially prescribed morality, and yet be consumed with the desire to do the right thing? That strikes me as a spot-on description of just about every character Willeford ever wrote. How could he come up with characters like that? My God, how could he help it?”

An MWA Grand Master and a multiple winner of the Edgar, Shamus, and Maltese Falcon awards, Lawrence Block’s reflections and observations come from over a half century as a writer of bestselling crime fiction. Several of his novels have been filmed, most recently A Walk Among the Tombstones, starring Liam Neeson.

While he’s best known for his novels and short fiction, along with his books on the craft of writing, that's not all he’s written. THE CRIME OF OUR LIVES collects his observations and personal reminiscences of the crime fiction field and some of its leading practitioners. He has a lot to say, and he says it here in convincing and entertaining fashion.

My first non-fiction read of the year and a book about other books, or more specifically authors that Lawrence Block has written introductions for. There’s a brief chapter on maybe 20 people most of whom are familiar to me, but a couple of names that are new to me – Henry Kane and Spider Robinson. Mr Block’s introductions for each book are reproduced.

The chapters on the authors I have read and enjoyed were most interesting for me, especially when they were contemporaries of Block and he includes anecdotes about meetings in bars and lunches and writer events.

Lunch with Charles Willeford is described, with some curious questions thrown into the conversation by Willeford. Cue discussion on hemorrhoids and the eating of cat. Block discusses his writing and the success that arrived towards the end of his life and the feelings of loss and sadness at hearing of Willeford’s passing.

So in that sense the news was not unexpected. But it was shocking all the same; when one meets with so clear and distinct a voice, one expects it to be around forever.

Block discusses his start in the business in the late 50’s working as an Associate Editor at the Scott Meredith Literary Agency. Work which seems to be little more than a con – writers sending in their work to be assessed at $5 a pop. He meets Donald Westlake here, which is the start of a friendship that stands more than 50 years.

What’s apparent about Block is the warmth he has for the writers he regards as his friends.

This was a really enjoyable and interesting read. I liked the stories and the anecdotes and the snippets of gossip that permeate every page and the hat-tips towards a few author and books that may have escaped my attention thus far. Thankfully there weren’t too many added to the list, probably because I have most of them already!

A snapshot of authors covered….Ross Thomas, Robert B. Parker, Mickey Spillane, Jim Thompson, Al Nussbaum, Evan Hunter/Ed McBain, Gar Anthony Haywood. There’s more, but these were the ones that most interested me.

I think if Lawrence Block wrote a telephone directory, I would be entertained reading it.

5 from 5

I received my review copy courtesy of an invitation from the author himself. (Probably one of his assistants, but I can delude myself thinking Larry Block e-mailed me!)

TOM O. KEENAN - THE FATHER (2015)

Synopsis/blurb…..

Shortlisted for the CWA Debut Dagger, 2014. Mental illness, alcohol abuse, and the tedium of pursuing typical killers, leave Sean Rooney a pathetic man, a failed forensic profiler, a bit of a loser and definitely retired. DCI Jacqueline Kaminski has other ideas. Faced with a multiple murder - and some headless corpses - she needs Rooney back on the case.

'A wonderful and gritty debut novel.' --Torquil MacLeod

'Scottish noir at its best.' --The Crack

Well it’s fair to say, I’m not in agreement with the two reviewers above. The Father was not a book that worked out well for me.

I think my main difficulties stemmed from my inability to find any redemptive qualities in the main characters charged with restoring order and capturing, or at least stopping our killer.

We had Rooney, a retired profiler and ex-husband of Jackie Kaminski, the lead detective for our opening murders. I could possibly spend a week, listing what was irritating, unlikeable or downright annoying about these two individually and collectively, both in and out of the workplace. If you’re interested in reading about a man, with an inner voice carrying on a constant monologue with himself, whilst endeavouring to drink himself unconscious, before waking up the following day after having soiled himself, and then setting out pretty much to do the same thing all over again – this might be the book for you.

The ex-wife wasn’t much better. This dysfunctional and less than dynamic duo were charging around Glasgow tasked with bringing the controlling and manipulative evil genius - who was killing off various targets by proxy – down.

We had plenty of murders throughout, we knew who the killer was maybe halfway through the book. The double act knew who the killer was halfway through the book and he was allowed to carry on, after having been in custody. Sorry just didn’t work for me at all.

And the rationale for the killings? Unconvincing for me. Messages in Latin, a history lesson regarding ancestors and land clearances….zzzz

The difficulty reading, if you don’t empathise with the good guys and you haven’t got an emotional investment in the victims, nothing particularly matters.     

I did like the Glasgow setting and the involvement of Glasgow’s criminal families in the tale. 

Rooney’s jaunt to France to observe the parents of our guilty party, provided some temporary respite from the constant pattern of drink, self-analysis and self-loathing and arguments with the ex-wife as we trundled towards the conclusion.  

A few bits that didn’t make sense to me – something about a photograph and something at the very end, which if people were minded to do, could in my opinion have been done much earlier on and to someone else and we could have all been let out of jail 100 pages earlier.

In places the writing was thoughtful and considered and made me pause…..

Rooney is drinking….

All of this is conducive to his self-abuse, his self-destruction by drink. He loathes himself, and drink takes him to places he doesn’t want to go, but can’t stay away from….his mind.

“What do I see? What am I? A mental illness. An alcohol abuse. A destroyed self,“ he says to the bottle……………What a pathetic fool I am.”

A dark book, maybe a Marmite book – either you love it or hate it. I claim to be a fan of darker books, but not this one. Usually, a way for me of judging my enjoyment is asking myself whether I would want to read more from the author……..probably not, if it features Sean Rooney again. A tougher question, if our characters were more relatable.

Tom O. Keenan has his website here.

2 from 5

Paul D Brazill like this one a lot more than me. His thoughts are here.

Keith Nixon - ditto, but not as much as PDB. Here.

Thanks to the publishers, McNidder & Grace for my copy.