More we missed in 2008

Every year at Crime Scene Scotland we get sent more books than we can handle. Not that we're complaining, mind you. We try and give every one a fair chance of getting read and reviewed, but some get left behind. So at the beginning of each new year a catch up post allows Crime Scene Scotland to give the skinny on those books from last year we missed out on the first time around.

Trigger City By Sean Chercover,

William Morrow, 2008, 978-0061128691, $23.95

Chercover has been up for all the big awards in the last year for his debut, Big City, Bad Blood and deservedly so: the novel breathed new life into the PI genre, one more step in its rejuvenation for the 21st century.

At Crime Scene Scotland, we dug the debut and were hyped to read Trigger City when it came across the welcome mat of the our secret Head Quarters. But it was with an air of uncertainty that we cracked the spine... could it live up to Chercover's debut offering?

The answering is a resounding yes. But more, Trigger City trumps Big City, Bad Blood to a massive degree. The narration, from world weary Chicago investigator Ray Dudgeon feels increasingly confident, the voice clearer and the humour less awkard than before. Chercover's style is massively natural, his voice engagingly human. Ray's personal and professional lives are increasingly developed here, particularly his relationship with (?) that becomes more complex and sometimes heartbreakingly believable as the novel progresses.

But what Chercover does to truly impress is mix this focus on the personal with an unexpected political canvas. It is unusual to read a novel whose focus feels so personal and yet whose scope is massively wide. As Ray investigates the life of a murderer who apparently took his own life, he stumb les across military and political conspiracies with some wide-reaching implications. Its at this point most novels implode under the weight of their own plots, but Chercover's stylish prose and focus on character allows him the leeway to explore larger issues within the scope of his thriller and not lose his characters in the bigger picture.

Trigger City merely confirms what those of us who read Big City, Bad Blood already knew: if there's any justice in the world, Sean Chercover is destined for great things.


The Drop Off by Patrick Quinlan

Headline, 2008, 9780755335497, £19.99

Quinlan's easy going style that wore its influences on the page in Smoked, before beginning to loosen its inspirational shackles in The Takedown here begins to feel utterly natural, a voice that has very much become the author's own. While still recalling the cool of Elmore Leonard, Quinlan adds his own spin to the cool, laconic voice and easygoing storytelling to create a thriller that simply flies by.

And as cool as it is, Quinlan never forgets that for all their posturing, his characters are real human beings. Returning to "Smoke" Duggan, his on-off, karate-expert love interest Lola and their partners in crime from SMOKED, Quinlan manages to evolve their relationships, creating a dynamic that flows from his earlier novel and yet changes the stakes for everyone involved. Sure, we'd all love to live in a cool-as-ice gangster movie, but what Quinlan does is cleverly show us the true downsides, especially when he takes the opportunity to get inside Lola's head as she tries to sort out the Smoke Duggan she thought she knew from the man he really is. And while Pamela, who's definitely digging being the girlfriend of a criminal named Cruz, seems to buy into the fantasy, her occasional realisation of the reality of her situation add more depth not simply to her character but to the novel as well.

Not that The Drop Off isn't also great fun, because it is: the action moves fast and the dialogue and set pieces retain that Leonard/Tarrantino hybrid that's fast become Quinlan's trade mark. The Drop Off is great fun, and Quinlan is one of those crime writers who just leaves you with a great big damn smile on your face.

The Deceived by Brett Battles

Preface Books, 2008, 9781848090286, £6.99

We'd still buy his books for the author name alone, but luckily Battles is one of those gifted thriller writers whose works keep the pages turning.

The second Jonathan Quinn finds the erstwhile cleaner going freelance following the events in The Cleaner, and still training up his apprentice, Nate. But when Quinn's latest job involves getting rid of the corpse of an old friend, he finds himself back in the dangerous underworld of conspiracies and government agencies with shady agendas.

Battles' style is fast, simple and clean: like reading a great action movie, you have a real sense of pace and character. And while the action is often thrilling, Battles never forgets about the characters in the midst of the chaos and nicely develops both major and secondary characters, even if the two potential femme-fatales - who sometimes feel a little more like MacGuffins than real people, but then maybe this is how Quinn sees them - come across as a little underdeveloped compared to many of the other characters in the book. Luckily, Quinn's developing relationship with the deadly beauty Orlando makes up for this, and when it counts, Battles really knows how to put his leads through the ringer.

The Cleaner was one of our favourite action thrillers of the past few years, and with The Decieved, Battles continues to entertain and get us turning those pages in a feverish anticipation of wanting to know what happens next...

Empty Ever After by Reed Farrel Coleman

Bleak House Books, 9781932557657, $14.95

One of the things that continues to impress us with the Moe Prager mysteries - whether Coleman intended this from the beginning or not - is how tightly connected each book in the series is. While they can be read alone, the emotional impact is even more impressive when you understand what has gone before.

If there is a central theme throughout the Prager books it seems to be that the past never truly dies; it is always reaching out to the future, as thought desperate to drag us back. And in no book has this been so self-evident than in Empty Ever After, which hearkens back to events in the first of the series, Walking The Perfect Square.

Coleman's writing is gripping, and his psychology fascinating. The Prager books have been among the most intriguing and unquely structured detective novels we've read in a long time, and Empty Ever After confirms and continues that impression. If there is one word of warning, we would say that its advisable to have read at least Walking the Perfect Square (available in reprint from Busted Flush Press along with Redemption Street and The James Deans) before starting this latest entry. Not only because its a wonderful novel in its own right, but doing so only enhances the emotional impact that drives Moe headlong into this investigation of his own past.

Russel D McLean for Crime Scene Scotland, 1/04/09

BEAST OF BURDEN by Ray Banks

Polygon, 2009, ISBN 9781846970986, £9.99

Please note that this review contains spoilers for previous books in the Cal Innes series. For those who have not read these novels, certain sections have been highlighted in dark grey. Please skip these sections if you have not read the previous novels in the series.

The problem with many series characters is that, after a while, they can lose their freshness. That very thing which made them unique in the beginning soon becomes trite and predictable. Twelve or thirteen novels in, suddenly the audience knows what to expect, loses any sense that their protagonist's world might suddenly shift and change.

From the beginning, Ray Banks has claimed that his Cal Innes books will have a finite arc. That Innes - one of the most flawed and intriguing of recent hardboiled protagonists - will change during the course of each book, will carry every scar earned, will be affected by everything that happens to him.

By the end of the third novel, No More Heroes, Innes had battled Codeine addiction, his own antipathy and been battered by cars, bricks, guns and fists. And then, just when you thought things couldn't get any worse, Banks showed his commitment to battering his protagonist by giving Innes a stroke in the midst of one of the worst race riots Manchester has ever seen.

As endings go, No More Heroes was a shocker. But Banks knows that he cannot cheat his reader and continues to play out the effects on Innes to a blinding degree. It is interesting to read a series character who maintains his essential characteristics and yet manages to evolve with each book. Here, even if Innes won't admit it, there is a definite shift in his character that may even be for the better. He is more humble than he has been before, even if he tries to deny that side of himself. He shouts and roars as loud as ever, and yet seems to have a more of a sense of self awareness than he ever had before. But this being Banks's world, it may be too little too late.

Beast of Burden attempts to tie up some of the dangling threads in Innes's life. By starting with Innes once more doing a favour for local gangster Morris Tiernan, we get a sense of some events coming full circle. You see, Tiernan's son Mo - drug dealer, waster and pain in Innes's arse - is missing. Tiernan wants Innes to find the lad. After all, Innes is a private investigator, right? No longer a wannabe, he's got a partner and a logo. This is his kind of work.

And it would be a simple job if it wasn't for the bad blood between Innes and Mo. Or the fact that one DS "Donkey" Donkin, last seen harrassing Innes in Saturday's Child, is hanging around, looking to hang Innes out to dry.

Banks has a number of ends to tie up in this final Innes novel, and he does a remarkable job of dealing with many seemingly disparate elements to create a coherent whole. More than any other entry in the Innes series, it probably helps if you've read the other novels, but then this is a sequence and not a series, so events have been building for some time anyway. The conclusion to Innes's run ins with Mo Tiernan is surprising and perhaps even a little jarring (here's a hint, do NOT read the acknowledgements first if you're the kind of person who does that: you're in for a major spoiler) but Banks is a fiendishly smart author and this unexpected move pays off beautifully. As with the other books in the series, this is all about how Innes reacts to a given situation, and the Mo Tiernan case gives him the kind of grief that truly tests a person.

And what is wonderful is that Innes doesn't pass with flying colours. Unlike many protagonists in the current crime fiction sphere, he is no superman. He does not neccasarily overcome his own demons. While he grows and develops as a character, Banks never forgets to allow him to make mistakes. Often huge or ugly ones. And this is why Innes is one of the best developed characters going in crime fiction: he is human, often in the worst possible ways.

But while Innes makes his mistakes, they often come from something approaching good intentions. And while we've seen him change over the course of five novels, no argument would make a difference to Banks's secondary narrator in the novel, DS "Donkey" Donkin. Donkin's narrative voice is scarred through with bitterness and resentment. He is the real-life version of a an old school copper relic like Gene Hunt from Life on Mars, except he's not cuddly or cute, given to moments of unnatural compassion - he's simply damn terrifying; a true dinosaur stampeding down the path towards his own extinction. On the subject of Innes, Donkin believes that no one can ever change. That Innes is as much of a fuck up as he ever was. But for men like Donkin, the world never changes. Change is a terrifying thing, and his rage at anything that threatens his concrete world view is a terrifying thing to behold.

While Banks has done the split voice before, in Saturday's Child, here he shows us true mastery by giving Donkin a unique voice that practically roars off the page. Banks, as a writer, is a true chameleon, never allowing the author to step out from behind his characters to take a bow. He truly makes the reader believe in the absolute and concrete reality of his character's voices.

We've said it before, and we'll say it again, that Banks is one of our favourite UK-based writers here at Crime Scene Scotland. He combines a ferocious voice with an understanding of modern Britain that refuses to hide or soften its blows behind the ramped up and improbably plotting of many current crime thrillers. Like Ted Lewis or Derek Raymond, Banks writes novels set in an unremittingly real world. And in the real world, all things - good and bad - must come to an end. So this book serves as Cal Innes's swan song. And as endings go, this one is tragic, compelling, gripping: a perfect finale to an incredible noir sequence.

Russel D McLean for crimescenescotland.com 17/03/09

Red Riding

Tonight, 9pm, Channel 4, the first of three film adaptations of David Peace's incredible Red Riding Quartet (yes, three films, although there were four novels). A review of the four original novels is being constructed as we speak. The four novels are absolutely incredible, if emotionally exhausting to read, and the films should deservedly find them a whole new readership. The next two films will be shown over the next two weeks on Thursday at 9pm.

In the meantime, the official channel 4 website is at www.redriding.channel4.com and the trailer is embedded below:

BLEED A RIVER DEEP, Brian McGilloway

MacMillan, April '09, ISBN 978-0230701366, £12.99

In the last few years, Ireland has been consistently upping the stakes with its contribution to the world of crime fiction. From cult figures such as Ken Bruen to bestsellers such as Tana French and John Connolly, the world of Irish crime fiction has never been more vibrant.

And now we can add the name of Brian McGilloway to the list.

His latest Inspector Devlin novel takes place with Irelands very own literal gold rush. Devlin is assigned to the security of a gold mine that has been opened up following the discovery of a possible seam near his patch. Its the perfect metaphor for the new money that has been pumping into Ireland these last few years, a theme that many of these writers - including Declan Hughes and Ken Bruen - have been dealing with, but McGilloway adds his own spin on proceedings as he proceeds to view proceedings from the view of Ireland's police force, the Garda; contrasting nicely with the private investigator and outsider heroes that have seemed more preferential in other Irish Crime fiction of late. McGilloway also touches on issues of immigration, human trafficking and other moral and political questions during the rapid course of his narrative. As with the best crime fiction, the commentary is hidden between the lines.

The character of Devlin himself is a fine creation and singles himself out from the herd of series characters constantly jostling for attention on the Crime Fiction scene. He's a damn fine copper. Headstrong, sure, but balanced and professional. Maybe he doesn't see eye to eye with his bosses, but he's a family man with a strong moral streak in him. Don't mistake any of this for dullness or weakness, however. When his moral code is challenged, Devlin rises to the challenge and pays the price professionally and sometimes personally for his dedication to the meaning of the job over the procedure of it all.

Bleed a River Deep was Crime Scene Scotland's first exposure to the work of McGilloway, and given this tight, smartly written and gripping third novel, it won't be our last.

Russel D McLean for CrimeSceneScotland.com, 6/01/09