Natural Causes - James Oswald

This is the first mainstream novel from Oswald, who has previously written fantasy.  The paperback has just come out and the second Inspector Tony McLean novel, The Book of Souls, comes out on July 4.  I read the ebook version.

You google Natural Causes and you get a lot of stuff about the opening chapter.  I don't know how it works in the paperback but in the ebook Oswald has deleted the controversial opening, which was actually a pitch for a competition, but includes it as an appendix with an explanation.  For me, a version of the shock-open or something else entirely should have been considered.  It took me ages to get hooked on the story.  Don't get me wrong, the writing is good, the characters interesting, but there are far too many of them and I kept forgetting who was who.  I was interested - I wasn't gripped.  Fortunately, perhaps, Natural Causes is 400+ pages and by about halfway (the hit-and-run) I was hooked.  Certainly, I will give Book of Souls a go.

Funnily enough, Oswald is co-judge of the Crime in the City short-story competition with Craig Robertson, another up-and-coming Tartan Noir exponent who promised much but didn't quite grab me as I would wish to be grabbed.  One thing very much in Oswald's favour, though, is his sense of irony.  His crime-writing mentor is manifested in Inspector McLean's 'apprentice', DC Stuart MacBride.

Random - Craig Robertson

Craig Robertson, formerly of Scotland's Sunday Post cleverly puts the press at the heart of this, his first novel.  Just how cleverly, we don't realise until the very end.

Plotting is exceptional here.  It's a serial killer first-person narrative, never easy to do, and we are never told our protagonist's name (we get his surname, indirectly, again towards the end).  By incorporating the press reports, which the killer studies assiduously, we gain the indispensable counter-view.  Motivation is also a problem - most serial killers kill for kicks of one sort or another and Robertson has, after all, called his novel Random.  Again, superior plotting saves the day.  It's not the purpose of this blog to give the game away but, suffice to say, when we realise what our killer's motivation is, we start to empathise.

The writing itself is brisk, propulsive, and spiced with Glasgow dialect.  The book is consciously Tartan Noir - our killer is not the worst or most violent character involved - with the extra twist of some truly innovative means of murder.

My only criticism is that it goes on maybe thirty pages too long.  Some wrapping up of loose ends is essential but not the final denouement, which trips over the obstacle intrinsic in first-person narrative and which, in this instance, really isn't worth the risk.  In detective novels it is customary to restore the world to balance.  This, however, is a psycho killer novel and the world of our protagonist can never return to balance.

All the same, a brilliant debut - exceptional - and a writer to watch.