BOOK REVIEW

Stuart MacBride burst onto the literary scene in 2005 with his debut novel Cold Granite, which followed the adventures of Detective Sergeant Logan McRae, who is known as Lazarus or Laz due to surviving a particularly bloody knife attack before the series started. He was part of a Major Investigation Team run by the foul, but beautifully conceived Detective Inspector Roberta Steel, a chain smoking harridan who mercilessly bullied her hapless crew.

Now on his ninth outing, McRae has gone from an acting Inspector in the last two novels, under the promoted Chief Inspector Steel, to a duty sergeant in a quiet Highland town after experiencing burn out and upsetting the powers-that-be with his unconventional policing style.

However, all that changes when the body of a young girl is discovered in a derelict swimming pool, and soon Logan is reluctantly drawn back to the high pressure world of a major investigation, while trying to perform his regular duties at the same time.

And perhaps the stand-out selling point behind this series is the dynamic between Steel and McRae. Forever arguing, there’s a genuine affection between the two, indeed Logan is the father of Steel and her wife’s child after he was browbeaten into becoming a donor and is now very much a part of her modern family. So much so, that Susan, Steel’s wife is pregnant again, and Logan is once again the reluctant father – though he dotes on his daughter and is secretly excited about the new baby.

To make his personal life more tangled, he has a girlfriend in a persistent vegetative state, and has sold his house to help pay for her care, Internal Affairs are convinced that he is dirty – he is, but only through circumstances, and to add to his troubles, he finds himself becoming close to a woman who has turned up claiming that the murdered girl may be her missing daughter.

Added to this is a secretive and violent child abuse ring that needs taking down, and you’ve got one of the best books to burst from the resurgent Tartan Noir genre. If you’re fed up of Rebus, McRae is a worthy successor.

Posted on