Laidlaw (Laidlaw Trilogy)

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Glasgow is unquestionably the star of this novel and, having lived there, I can confirm this really evokes the place. Though I'm a noir fan, I otherwise tend to dislike mysteries and detective fiction, and the only thing I know about Glasgow is what I saw walking from one of the city’s train stations to another several decades ago. The complexity comes from all the people--on both sides--each with their web of talents and problems.

The characterisation throughout the book is particularly strong, each character as believable as the next. McIlvanney’s Glasgow is a bleak place, with violence never far beneath the surface, fuelled by drink and prejudice. My favorite passage is the one that was probably the most likely for the author to get wrong (I remember there was an unwritten rule in every 70's crime movie that there must be an explicit sex scene somewhere), showing his hero with the guard down and in the arms of a woman not his wife. It’s extremely effective, and some of the scenes are very powerful, one in particular when family and neighbours gather in the house of the victim, men in one room, women in another. The Laidlaw books are like fine malt whisky - the pure distilled essence of Scottish crime writing: ( Peter May).The dialogue is top-notch too and I was left to wonder how much of all of this was present in McIlvenny’s draft and what proportion was reliant on Rankin’s deft touch. For example the murder happens Saturday night (You can almost hear the Bay City Rollers singing along in every description of the disco clothes the young people were wearing). A private man, Laidlaw is the subject of speculation among other officers, to which Laidlaw pays no heed. McIlvanney was a well established, prize winning literary author when he set to crime writing and gave us Inspector Laidlaw in 1977.

It turns out she had lied about where she was going and what her true intentions were on the fateful Saturday night, not only to her parents but to her best friend too. Rankin που δεν μετέτρεψε τον Laidlaw σε Rebus-που σεβάστηκε τους χαρακτήρες και των δύο ηρώων και που το αποτέλεσμα είναι ομοιογενές. When Laidlaw was released in 1977, McIlvanney was known for recently winning the Whitbread Prize with his historical family novel, Docherty; as a complete departure from that genre, it surprised many of his readers.He absorbs the mood and the chatter and seeks out people of interest, testing them out with provocative questions and leaving no stone unturned. McIlvanney shifts our viewpoint from chapter to chapter, sometimes telling it from the viewpoint of the young copper who's been assigned to assist Laidlaw and sometimes from the viewpoint of minor characters, like a wannabe gangster who winds up in waaaaay over his head and pays dearly for that mistake.

His bend toward philosophical thought can make even the simplest question or comment from another into an existential activity. There are many characters and many red herrings, and if I had a criticism, it would be that sometimes I forgot which gangster owed allegiance to which gang.Another one, which takes the POV of a character who's openly homosexual, seems way ahead of its time. I put in the plus column his obvious intelligence, his unconventional methods of investigation, his flashes of black humour, his single-minded determination to solve the case he is working on, ultimately his own doubts and insecurities that make him so much more human and interesting. Gather enough people together in one place and malignancy is guaranteed to manifest in some form or another. Glasgow in the 1960s is the backdrop to this gangsterland story where a gang leader's lawyer is murdered and his body dumped in a rival'