This is the third in Mackay’s Glasgow Trilogy, about competition between different crime lords in that Scottish city.  The plot focuses on a paid killer, Calum MacLean, a youngish man who has done a lot of work. He is good at his job, but he wants out. The book starts with him killing two people and he has had enough. But his bosses don’t want to let him go. From the initial murders, we see the repercussions spread out to all involved. It’s suitably grim.

The chapters are short, and so are the sentences.  The narrator keeps his observations brief, telling the reader about the thoughts of the people as they enter into the narrative, and then letting them go.  The text is dispassionate, observing the odd things people do with little comment. Probably, the most distinctive feature of the text is entering into the stream of thought of one character and then suddenly shifting to that of another character the prior one encounters.  It’s striking and appealing.  There’s enough going on so that the book maintains the reader’s interest through the 10 hours of the unabridged audiobook, 400 pages of the paper version. The reader of the audiobook version, Angus King, must be Scottish because his accent is completely right.  Although it probably helps to have read the first two books in the trilogy before this one, it isn’t necessary.

© 2015 Christian Perring

Christian Perring, Professor of Philosophy, Dowling College, New York