A Question of Blood - Ian Rankin

 A Question of Blood (2003) is one of the best Rebus novels.   I read and did't much rate the early ones as they came out.   The latest additions are expertly written but Rebus is retired, his involvement in crime solving increasingly difficult to justify and the police element split between the promoted Siobhan Clarke and the Complaints officer Malcolm Fox.   2003 is Rebus at the height of his buccaneering career.  At the start of A Question of Blood we are led to believe he has murdered Martin Fairstone, DS Clarke's stalker.   Fairstone died in a chip pan fire and Rebus is in hospital with what he claims are scalded hands but which others suspect might be burns.

A shooting incident at a private school in Queensferry gives Rebus and Clarke a chance to keep out of sight.   The officer in charge, DI Bobby Hogan, asks for Rebus's help and, since Rebus can't even light his own cigarettes, Clarke will have to assistt.   Hogan calls on Rebus because the shooter, who then killed himself, was an ex-SAS man called Lee Herdman, and Hogan knows that Rebus tried out for the SAS during his military service.   The two dead youths are the son of a judge and what Rebus suddenly realises is the son of a cousin he used to look after when he was on leave.   Rebus's family relations are always distant, so it is somewhat awkward when he visits his distraught cousin.

Rebus obviously shouldn't be involved because of the family link, but this is easily navigated as he is, and because of his hands can only be, a consultant.   He comes across a goth princess called Miss Teri who also attends the same school as the victims.   And then there is the youth who was shot and survived, James Bell, soon of Jack Bell the publicity hungry MSP whom Rebus has come across before.   Other old acquaintances with links to the crime are Peacock Johnson, gun supplier to Edinburgh's more militant thugs, and his henchman Evil Bob.

Clarke meanwhile comes across another SAS veteran called Doug Brimson, who was a friend of Herdman.  Brimson now runs a flying school.   He his handsome and friendly, obviously well off, and Siobhan takes a fancy to him.

The storytelling is masterful.   I guessed the twist in the main investigation but got nowhere near the motivation.   As I say, for me A Question of Blood is one of the best Rebus novels and highly recommended.

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).

A Song for the Dark Times - Ian Rankin

 

Rankin's latest Rebus is as good as ever.  Late phase Rebus, of course, means retired Rebus getting involved, one way or another, in crimes being investigated by Siobhan Clarke and Malcolm Fox.  And there's no change here.  What I would say, though, is that in A Song for the Dark Times the potentially tricky mix is done better than in some of the others.  The cases are separate but involve some of the same people.  Rebus is called up to the rural North when his estranged daughter's partner is murdered and Samantha is a prime suspect.  Meanwhile in Edinburgh Fox joins the team led by Siobhan's partner DCI Graham Sutherland, investigating the murder of wealthy Saudi student and James Bond fan, Salman Bin Mahmoud.  Fox has been seconded from MIT because Salman's father is being detained by the Saudi authorities and the Foreign Office want oversight of the case.  The connection between the two cases is that the Meiklejohn family owns the former PoW camp in which Sam's partner's body was found, and Lady Isabella Meiklejohn appears to be Salman's girlfriend.

It's very clever - beautifully written, of course - and eminently satisfying in the resolution.  Rankin on top form.

Blind Eye - Stuart MacBride

A Logan McRea story from 2009, this is MacBride on top of his form - dark, witty, and set in Aberdeen. Polish people are turning up with their eyes removed and the sockets burnt. Some of them survive. Inevitably, McRae, back from sick leave (having eaten human flesh in the previous novel) gets seconded to DCI Finnie's team. Meanwhile his immediate boss, DCI Roberta Steel, is pressuring him for a donation to her wife Susan's dream of a baby. On the positive side, his luck is in with the tattooed girl from IB and he uncovers a lead which gets him a free trip to Poland.

In Poland he meets a hot Polish policeman and a blinded bomb maker. This leads to McRae and the girl getting blown up - and we're still only about two-thirds of the way through the book.

I have always enjoyed MacBride. For me, he has overtaken Ian Rankin at the top of the Scottish crime fiction tree. Rankin's problem is that his hero has become aged and inactive. That hasn't yet happened with McBride, but Blind Eye reminds me how great he was in his pomp and that things have faded slightly over more recent novels. Still, as with Rankin, I won't be able to resist new instalments.

In a House of Lies - Ian Rankin

The odd dud is inevitable when you are as prolific as Ian Rankin, and this is undoubtedly one of his. It seems to be based on two celebrated podcasts about murder, the Adnan Syed case which made Serial a worldwide hit and the murder of Daniel Morgan in London in 1987. Basically we have the murder of a private detective and the key clue about how long a car was parked where it was found which hinges on the analysis of soil and grass. Note to Rankin: You're a crime writer; never assume your crime readers are less informed than you are.

The second problem is that Rankin continues to employ the detective triad which, for me at least, is no longer interesting or indeed credible: Rebus, Malcolm Fox and Siobhan Clarke. It is essentially a good idea. Now he is retired Rebus can be even more of a wild card; Clarke has to obey the rules or her long association with Rebus will hold her back; and Fox polices the police. The problem is, they all come with baggage from up to 21 previous outings, or, in Fox's case, from two novels in which he was the replacement for Rebus. This means a certain number of secondary characters have to revisited, even if there is no plotting need. If Rankin isn't at the very top of his game, this can lead to an imbalance between investigation and back story. Needless to say, in Rebus #22, Rankin isn't at the apex of his ability.

It's readable - Rankin is always readable - but the problems are overwhelming. Both the A plot and the B subplot are fundamentally unbelievable; no one kills or accepts the blame for killing for such trivial reasons. And the novel itself is about 25% too long. I hope Rankin recovers form for the next Rebus. I for one could not take another misfire, especially as recent instalments have been so good.

February's Son - Alan Parks

I read Parks' first, Bloody January, in bloody January, which was apt. Damned if I was going to wait until next February to read the second in the Harry McCoy series, which is this, February's Son. It starts three weeks after Bloody January ended. McCoy has recovered from his injuries and is called into work the day before his sick leave was supposed to end. This being Glasgow in 1973, there has been a murder, a nasty one. The victim is the current star of Celtic FC and soon-to-be son-in-law of the murderous Jake Scobie, head of one of the Glasgow crime families. Has Jake heard that young Charlie has been playing away? It's a promising line of inquiry, but it grinds to a halt when Jake is butchered in just the same way.

Meanwhile McCoy's friend and childhood protector Stevie Cooper has seen a picture of one of their abusers, 'Uncle Kenny', in the paper. Now they know who Kenny is, can Cooper and McCoy let things lie? We all know that's unlikely.

As I said back in January, Parks is a real find, a direct heir to Ian Rankin, albeit they are about the same age. The police side of his stories is pure procedural with all the banter and implicit loyalties and feuds that involves. The noir side is very dark indeed. Everybody over the last decade has done a child abuse storyline, but Parks has his lead cop as a victim who carries his abuse with him for life.

February's Son is absolutely as good as Bloody January, maybe even slightly better. I like, for example, the way McCoy's relationship with Susan is handled, and the development of the role of Jumbo. The ending is again just a fraction contrived, but this is my one and only criticism. I loved it. Roll on March!

Rather be the Devil - Ian Rankin

This is the 2016 instalment of Rebus and continues the high standard of recent Rebus novels. Again, Rebus is shadowed by the insipid Malcolm Fox, former Professional Standards chief, now attached to the Scottish Crime Campus at Gartcosh. Fox is meant to be the antithesis of Rebus, the good cop who plays by the rules, but he never manages to do so and is far too dull to do anything but get in Rebus's way. This was not the case in the two standalone Fox novels, The Complaints and The Impossible Dead, both of which I greatly enjoyed, but the sooner he is ditched from the Rebus series the better. The only contrast we need with Rebus is his former oppo Siobhan Clarke, whose character continues to add richness to successive novels.


The structure here is complex. Rebus is taking his mind off his health problems by looking into an almost forty year old cold case, the murder of Maria Turquand, strangled in a city centre hotel full of bankers and pop stars and crooks. The police, meanwhile, are investigating an attack on local gangster Darryl Christie. His gangland mentor, Big Ger Cafferty, is a prime suspect and so is Anthony Brough, the missing grandson of banking buccaneer Sir Magnus Brough, who was peripherally involved in the Turquand case insofar as his deputy was married to Maria. Thus Rebus is drawn in to the inquiry.


In fact, the cold case storyline rather fizzles out. The main story, however, is full of fun. Big Ger himself plays a full and active role - Rankin is so taken with him, indeed, that this edition contains a short story 'Cafferty's Day' "exclusive to Waterstone's" (which is not as impressive as it might sound, since Waterstone's is the owner of W H Smith's and now Foyles' and is thus the only British mass market book chain). In fact the story is neither here nor there. It could have been worse - at least it ties in to the main novel.


In summary, then: a top quality police procedural, as good as anything similar in the market and a good deal better than most. Rankin remains on top form, which is saying something given that 2017 was the 30th anniversary of the first Rebus.

Bloodline - Mark Billingham

Hard to say where Bloodline fits into the Tom Thorne series. I suspect it is Number 8. Does it matter? Not really. Bloodlines is still the right side of the dividing line which threatens all series - it is a crime thriller with bits of character development thrown in, rather than a character novel with bits of crime bolted on. In fact Billingham handles the 'personal life' stuff very well here. There is a major domestic crisis which reflects the main crime theme but the character development is that both Thorne and his partner Lou bury their feelings in their police work and prioritise the crime.

It is a serial killer story because Billingham is essentially a writer of very dark noir. The question is, in an era where genetic research is everything, can serial killing be an inherited trait? Essentially, the supposed son of a famous serial killing is going round killing the children of his father's victims in order to 'prove' that his father was obeying genetic code rather than personal inclination. It's a great idea, handled well on the whole, though I would have preferred some deeper development. Billingham rather handicaps himself in that respect by sending super-pathologist Hendricks, the fount of all theoretical argument in Thorne's world, to a conference in Sweden.

My only other reservations are these: I didn't care for the tricksy prologue and quickly fathomed out its relevance; and I really didn't like the killer's journal. These are very minor quibbles. I'm sure other people thought they were great. Yes I guessed who dunnit as soon as we were introduced but that to me is no problem at all. The plotting was as ever fiendish and Billingham writes like a well-modulated dream. The dialogue crackles, especially the banter between Thorne and Hendricks.

Has Billingham succeeded Rankin as the premier UK crime writer of today or is that Val McDermid? It's a close one and I fancy it boils down to how quickly Rankin dumps the increasingly tedious Malcolm Fox and fully revivifies Rebus.

Even Dogs in the Wild - Ian Rankin

This is the third Rebus and Fox story. I reviewed the first, Standing in Another Man's Grave, a year or so ago and have evidently missed the second, Saints of the Shadow Bible. No matter: Rankin is always able to make his novels sufficient in themselves as well as part of a series.


Rebus is retired and Fox has left Complaints. Somebody is going around murdering people with no apparent connection - Senior Scottish lawyer and peer Lord Minton, a lottery winner up north and Big Ger Cafferty, Edinburgh's gangster emeritus. Actually, the killer takes a pot shot at Cafferty and misses. The cases are linked because each has been given warning, a note shoved their letterbox declaring I'M GOING TO KILL YOU FOR WHAT YOU DID.


Meanwhile a gang of Glasgow thugs are in town looking for a purloined shipment of drugs. A squad of Glasgow cops follows, to which Fox is attached for want of anything better for him to do. Rebus, meanwhile, is the only person Cafferty is willing to talk to. Things develop. The link is obvious from quite early on, sadly predictable and the subject of more or less every contemporary British crime novel nowadays. But what matters here is how the story is unravelled and the strength of the characters.


Which is where the problem lies. Malcolm Fox, no matter how fond of him Rankin has become, no matter how much story he tries to load onto his shoulders, is far too dull to keep pace with Rebus. Any section with him in is instantly forgettable. Rankin is aware of this and relegates him to the gangster subplot. It is Fox who is placed in jeopardy. Unfortunately I was rather hoping it would prove fatal.


Rankin is a great crime novelist. The noir-tinged Scottish procedural is his baby and nobody does it better. But it has become slightly old fashioned. The taste now is for full noir. And he has let his characters grow old, which means their continued involvement in crime is always going to stretch credulity. By incorporating Fox he has diluted the mix. There are so many senior coppers involved here that I lost track. I enjoyed it, but was not blown away. Still, it won't stop me reading the next instalment or seeking out Saints of the Shadow Bible, which, if nothing else, has a much better title.

Standing in Another Man's Grave - Ian Rankin

This, apparently, is Rebus #18 and Fox #3, which handily also reflects their respective contributions to this story. It's a great idea to bring the two police protagonists together but it doesn't really work because Fox of Complaints only serves to tell us what we already know - that Rebus, now retired and working for Cold Cases, is a bit of a maverick.

The idea of setting Rebus's return in Cold Cases, on the other hand, works well. Every professional relationship we have followed through the preceding 19 novels is now reversed - Siobhan Clarke, formerly his oppo, is now his direct superior; Ger Cafferty, notorious gangland kingpin, is now also officially retired and Rebus's occasional, awkward, drinking buddy. Otherwise, the things which defined Rebus are thankfully much the same: nothing in his life except policework; the drive always to make things harder for himself than they need to be.

Forget the Malcolm Fox stuff, which is either a failed gimmick or (as I prefer to believe) a necessary device to frame Rebus's potential return to the force; this is essentially old school Rebus. Perhaps I should amend that slightly. Standing in Another Man's Grave is Rebus after he became fully grown from around the fifth novel in the sequence, when he gradually transitioned from detective to flawed hero.

The story is a good one. Rebus is able to link a missing young woman to a series of previous disappearances which convince the inquiry team there is a serial killer on the loose. Thus Rebus is seconded to the main inquiry, reunited with Clarke, and all is business as usual. There is a good running joke about the ambitious DCI being called James Page (i.e. Jimmy Page, the Led Zeppelin legend). We have the usual conflict between traditional hands-on policing and modern micro-managed policing-by-computer. Rebus mixes with the Edinburgh underworld in all its glory.

The midpoint twist I expect we would all see coming - I certainly did for once in my reading life - and the ultimate solution is neither here nor there. Somebody had to do it, it has to be Rebus who finds him, no one of course believes Rebus and Clarke has to be equivocal. That is what we want from a Rebus novel. That is what we get. In this instance we also get Rankin at the height of his powers. It's a long novel, 350 pages, but Rankin is able to fill it with character and complexity.

Let It Bleed (Rebus 7) - Ian Rankin

The beauty of ebooks is that you can download one for under £1 in a click. You don't have time or need to speculate. If it's not up to scratch, no biggie. I bought the first Rebus when it came out in paperback, probably in the early Nineties. I still remember how disappointed I was. The plot was nothing much to write home about and the detective's name was just plain silly. I have to say I didn't think much of the early TV adaptations either - the ones starring John Hannah - though they did improve when Ken Stott took over, and Stott remains the model for the Rebus in my head.

Anyway, last week Let it Bleed was on offer and I thought what-the-hey? It's halfway through the series and sure enough Rebus has amassed sufficient character to make time spent in his company enjoyable. The new edition has exclusive extra material from Rankin which for me was best avoided. I really don't need insights into the authorial psyche unless they are incorporated into the main text.

The story itself is very much of its era, the mid-Nineties, when the UK was finally waking up to the legacy of the Thatcher free-marketeers. Entrepreneurship has corrupted every aspect of public life. The legerdemain that Rankin pulls off here is very impressive; he sends us off in pursuit of the usual suspect who turns out to be the wrong suspect. Rankin at this period was not great at the intricacies of the police system (though he is now with his Malcolm Fox series) and Let It Bleed succeeds principally because Rebus is working off the books, which gives him something to lose - his career, the only things he has to keep him from out-and-out alcoholism - if it all goes pear-shaped.

There's something else here which, for me at least, the early books lacked, and that's compassion. The alkies and the junkies and the petty criminals are all real people, the real bad guys - the upwardly mobile - perhaps slightly less so. This enables flashes of wit that really humanise Rebus's world without distracting from the seriousness of the plot.

In short, then, I enjoyed it. The name Rebus is still silly, but after all this time what can Rankin do? I can't help wondering if the Rebus/Fox mash-up Even Dogs in the Wild (2015), presumably a sort of Edinburgh version of Superman meets Batman, might offer me the perfect Rankin experience.

Watchman - Ian Rankin

Watchman is Rankin's third novel, after Flood, which I loved, and the first Inspector Rebus novel, Knots and Crosses, which I bought when it first came out in paperback and thought was very poor. Watchman, reasonably enough, sits somewhere between the two.  Like Knots it is genre fiction and thus does not aim as high as Flood.  In this instance it is spy fiction, written very much in the aftermath of watching the Smiley adaptations on TV.  Miles Flint is a silly name, but no sillier than George Smiley, and as with Smiley the name is the direct opposite of the man.  Smiley never smiled - or, at least, not as if he meant it - and Miles Flint is neither well-travelled nor especially hard.

Flint is a watchman, an organiser of surveillance.  One of his key operations goes horribly wrong.  He seems to have been forgiven but soon realises he hasn't.  Machinations are in progress for the top job at MI5, as they always seem to be in sub le Carre fiction, and Miles finds himself caught in the crosshairs.  He is despatched to Ulster, still - in 1988 - embroiled in the Troubles, betrayed and left to fend for himself.  Can he rise to the occasion?  That is the nub of the book but it is far too long in coming.  Really what we have here is three stories rather crudely bolted together.  It cries out for depth and knowledge of the human condition that sets le Carre apart.

It's an immature work by a young writer still trying to find his voice.  There's nothing wrong in that - on these foundations Rankin built one of the great literary careers.  It's well worth reading and judging on its own merits.  But you wouldn't want to read it twice.

Disappeared - Anthony Quinn

Disappeared is Anthony Quinn's first novel, and allowances must be made.  On the positive side, a story about the 'disappeared' of the Ulster Troubles is current and compelling.  Quinn's descriptions of the shores of Lough Neagh are spellbinding and sometimes downright beautiful.  On the negative side, the plot is preposterous, there are far too many characters to keep track of, and pretty well all of them are more interesting than Quinn's lacklustre protagonist DI Celsius Daly yes, the name is the only interesting trait).  On the whole, the positives just outweigh the negatives.  I read it to the end, otherwise it wouldn't be here on my blog.  The denouement was a bit disappointing - somewhat of a deus ex machina.  Also, am I right in thinking that diesel isn't easily flammable, thus not the weapon of choice for your averagely intelligent teenage arsonist?

Personally, I won't be revisiting Inspector Daly again in a hurry.  That shouldn't put anyone else off - I hated the first Rebus novels when they came out, and look what happened with them.

The Flood - Ian Rankin

The Flood is Rankin's first novel, out of print for many years and republished in 2005 because, as Rankin says, original copies were going for silly money on the Internet.

In his introduction Rankin makes lots of excuses - it's a first novel, a young man's novel, he was doing other things at the time - but I suspect he is really very proud of it.  And so he should be.  I am notoriously not a Rebus fan, I like the 'Complaints' series and I always enjoyed his Jack Harvey thrillers.  I enjoyed The Flood hugely.  It may be old fashioned of me, perhaps even touchingly immature, but I like stories of outsiders and psychos with a touch of the macabre.  I especially like novels written during the Thatcherite Terror which encapsulate the damage done to the working classes.

What we have are Mary Miller and her son Sandy, father unknown, born when she was fifteen in a mining town in Fife.  Fifteen years later the pit has been closed and residents have had all the hope sucked out of them.  Sandy is about to experience first love.  For Mary it will be second love - she hasn't had sex or romance since the night Sandy was conceived.  But she's still only thirty or thirty-one and striking looking with her silver hair and dark eyes.  The rumour among the disaffected is that Mary is a witch.  She has so many secrets.  Is that one of them?

If there are any faults here, I am happy to forgive them.  For me, a cracking read that I devoured in just two sittings.  Highly recommended.

The Complaints - Ian Rankin

This is the first of Rankin's two novels (to date) about Malcolm Fox and the Edinburgh police complaints unit.  Typically, I read the other one, The Impossible Dead, first.  I enjoyed that greatly but consider this one better.

I read Rankin when he first came out.  I read the first three Rebus novels, then gave up because they weren't up to scratch.  I found the TV dramatisations clichéd and avoided subsequent Rebus novels like a bad cold.  I should probably reconsider and try revisiting the series halfway through - something like Dead Souls or The Falls - because I always enjoyed his stand-alone Jack Harvey thrillers and consider the Complaints novels to be of superior quality.

Rankin is still fond of a cliché - the Complaints quickly becoming the subject of complaints - but they are virtually impossible to avoid in genre fiction.  It's what you do with them that counts.  And here it's the starting point for a complex, multi-layered conspiracy set against the collapse of the banks in 2008-9 which, thanks to the Royal Bank of Scotland, was an extreme blow to Scottish pride and the Scottish economy.  Current events are central to the story and totally engrained in the action and for me, that sets this book head-and-shoulders above its competitors.

A great way to start my reading year.

The Impossible Dead - Ian Rankin

I never quite got Rankin.  Although I loved his Jack Harvey thrillers, the early Rebus bored me, as did all his TV incarnations, and I therefore missed the point when the series went serious.  I'll have to do some catching up, clearly.  This, however, is the second of Rankin's successor series to Rebus (albeit Rebus is now back), featuring Malcolm Fox and his colleagues from Complaints.

It took a while to draw me in - one of the problems I always had with Rankin is that he doesn't buttonhole you but expects you to stick with it.  I did stick with it and was soon full-body immersed.  It's a cracking story with its roots in a forgotten period, the Tartan terror of the 1980s.  Nowadays we have to make up or bogeymen; back then we bred our own and Rankin is clearly intrigued by the question, Where Are They Now?

Fox is a decent character, no larded-on vices, no overwrought love life.  He has a family, a sister and a father, and they are beautifully drawn, too.  Rankin wisely resists the temptation to let his narrative stray outside of Fox's knowledge.  He is in every scene - even when he isn't physically there, we experience what happened through Fox being told.

Overall, a very impressive, highly-skilled piece of work.  I will certainly lay hands on The Complaints itself, and may well try the reborn Rebus.  Highly recommended.

Cold Granite - Stuart MacBride

This is it, the first of the Logan McRae series.  Well, I say first.  Certainly it is the first to be published - it is, indeed, MacBride's first published book - but the sheer amount of backstory here makes it clear to me that there was an earlier, unpublished attempt.  No doubt whilst hawking that round publishers MacBride wrote a successor, Cold Granite, which was accepted, helped, probably, by the amount of backstory.

Anyhow, it's a thumpingly good start, an assured welcome to the world of Grampian Police.  Logan is back on duty a year after having his guts perforated by a serial killer he captured.  This is why they call him Laz, because he is Lazarus back from the dead.  The day starts badly.  The mutilated body of a small boy have been found.  Things spiral downhill from there.  DI Steel is otherwise engaged, so Laz is assigned to DI Insch, he of the temper and the sweeties.  The pathologist is Laz's ex, Isobel.  The newshound harrying McRae for the inside track is the new-in-town Colin Miller.

There are other magnificent writers of Scottish crime fiction - Rankin, McDermid, Mina (whose just won an award for her latest) - and all crime fiction is to a greater or lesser extent noir, but MacBride is far and away the most accomplished purveyor of Tartan Noir as a specific genre, and with Cold Granite established himself as such from Day One.

Broken Skin - Stuart MacBride

The third in the superb Logan McRae series, and to my mind the best I have so far read.  Broken Skin features multiple crimes (burglaries, rapes, a fisting-to-death on Aberdeen's BDSM scene, and the world's worst brat-from-Hell, porn and paedophilia) mixes in Logan's complicated love-life, DI Steel and her cigs, DI Insch, his sweeties and boiling blood pressure, The Mikado and the legendary Ma Stewart.  The best line, which in its way epitomises the tone, goes to DI Steel: "I'd rather you didn't wank off my constables with a bread knife."  Quite.

Violent, funny, serious on subjects which warrant seriousness, and effortlessly flowing - near as dammit 600 pages, which just fly by.  The pupil of Rankin and McDermid, MacBride is surely the best of his Tartan Noir generation.