The Dark Remains - William McIlvanney and Ian Rankin

 On the face of it, The Dark Remains is an unexpected treat, an unfinished novel by the pioneer of Tartan Noir completed by the master of the form.  In reality it falls below the average of either.  The story itself has potential: the murder of a front man for one of the local gangs threatens to spark a turf war in 1972, when Glasgow was still dying on its hind quarters.

It is perfectly readable, obviously, but there is a conspicuous lack of darkness, the mordant black humour for which both McIlvanney and Rankin were known in their heyday, even credible violence.  The names of the characters - Carter, Thompson - seem like placeholders for something better.  I didn't figure out who the murderer was, but then I rarely do.  I was neither surprised nor especially interested when it was revealed.  There is an tagged-on episode in which the stirrer-up of the turf war gets his comeuppance.  I had forgotten who he was, which in a large print novel of less than 300 pages read over two consecutive days is not good.

It's trivial footnote to a significant career.  There was a reason McIlvanney left it unfinished.  Rankin can still deliver a good novel but it's all about retirement these days, the older man looking back.  Canongate would have done better to get Stuart Macbride or one of the younger lions to work on Dark Remains (which is also a poor title, having nothing to do with the plot).

Quarry's Choice - Max Allan Collins

I found this thanks to paperbackwarrior.com, which has fast become a Facebook favourite of mine. Max Allan Collins I vaguely knew as a prolific writer of contemporary pulp (although I had no idea how vast his range was before looking him up on Wikipedia) and Quarry rang a bell somewhere at the back of mind. I soon realised, on reading the set up chapter for this story, that the bell was the TV series Quarry which I had enjoyed last year but which had nevertheless got cancelled.

Anyway, the book series which Collins began at the time it is set (mid-Seventies) is about a Vietnam vet who returns home to find nothing waiting for him. No job, an antipathetic if not downright hostile citizenry and his wife having an affair with a local petrolhead, who soon suffers a nasty and highly memorable accident. Quarry (not his real name) is, however, exactly what the Broker is looking for - a hitman who can be relied upon to do the wet work efficiently and permanently. The Broker is the go-between. Quarry never knows who the client is or - up front - the reason the nominee needs to die.

Except in this case. The Broker is the client after Quarry saves him from an initial hit. The job takes him down to Biloxi where he signs up with the progressive wing of the Southern Mafia, which controls the casinos, bars and strip joints along the coast.


Turns out there is more wet work in Biloxi than anyone envisaged. Quarry's services are in high demand. He has choices to make - hence the title.


Collins writes with fluid grace. His phraseology is just sufficiently hard-boiled; it never even threatens to spill over into pastiche. His book, written in 2015 (39 years after Quarry's debut) but still set in 1972, is historically convincing with just the right amount of period detail. The twist, when it comes, is a great one. I did guess who it would involve but got nowhere near how.


Excellent. I want more.


And by the way, I love the cover.

What It Was - George Pelecanos

In the present day, two middleaged men chew the fat in a Washington bar.  Both are PIs from Pelecanos's earlier fiction - his original character, Nick Stefanos, and the post-Millennium character Derek Strange, this time without his partner Terry Quinn.

They reminisce about their youth, back in the Seventies, and Strange tells the tale of the notorious Red Fury who made a brief, spectacular name for himself in 1972.  The book is really about Red, as Pelecanos makes clear in the Intro - and Red is based on the real-life Cadillac Smith.  Strange is the right character to oversee Red's story because he, like Red, is black.  Red gets his handle from the reddish tinge of his distinctive Afro.

The 1972 Strange, four years out of the MPD and newly set-up as a PI, is drawn into Red's story by virtue of ring he is hired to find.  Pelecanos is really shrewd here, because commonsense tells us PIs are rarely hired to investigate killings.  The Homicide detective is Frank 'Hound Dog' Vaughan, a middleaged cop on the verge of retirement, thus making the circle with 2012 Strange and Stefanos.  Vaughn was Strange's partner back in '68, which again makes their cooperation in '72 sensible.

Vaughn is not the only one on the tail of Red Fury.  Red has caused a New York mobster to lose money and face, which is clearly not acceptable.  Red himself knows his days are limited.  The question is, who is going to get to him first?

Nobody writes dialogue as naturally and convincingly as Pelecanos.  Writing The Wire clearly honed his technique into a minor art form.  The characters, as ever, are compelling and multi-layered.  There is a slight problem structurally - he sets up Strange as the storyteller but immediately switches to third person for the story itself, allowing him to fully develop all his main characters.  He tries to resolve the problem with a jokey and unnecessary Outro, but for me that makes it worse.  What makes the novel sing, though, is the wonderful, encyclopedic period detail.  The beers, the cars, the fashions, the hairdo's and, above all, the music.

I have admitted in other reviews that I am not a big fan of the Derek Strange series.  But What It Was is nevertheless a reading treat.