I’ve read quite a lot of Scottish noir over the years, I pretty much always enjoy it, but this was on the lower end. Even for someone like myself who is quite willing to allow myself to be deceived and is generally stupid enough to miss the obvious It was unusually predictable, which is a shame, who dunnits are like fun little presents but I found myself mostly just waiting for this to finish on the off chance I was wrong.

Again in comparison to other Scottish crime fiction this was unusually conservative in terms of its political tone. Very concerned with the degeneracy of drugs and sex practically all the characters look down on the victims and generally seem to think they deserve it, painting the murderer as only going too far. This is probably closer to the truth of Scottish cops but it’s nice to use fiction to explore the why of things or even imagine how policing could be better. Not that I expect radical anarchy from copaganda.