THE SECOND CUT Louise Welsh (Canongate £14.99, 384pp)
THE SECOND CUT
by Louise Welsh (Canongate £14.99, 384pp)
This sequel to Welsh’s award-winning debut, The Cutting Room, again features dissolute gay auctioneer Rilke. This film begins with a happy marriage between two Bobbys in Glasgow, but then it turns darker.
Rilke, Rose’s boss, continues to retain the Gothic taste of the original as Jojo informs Rilke about selling the contents a large house on the Scottish border owned by the Forrests.
Then Jojo turns up dead and Rilke is caught in the midst of a brutal battle between two gang leaders in the city’s underworld. This grand house also serves as the headquarters for a drug-trafficking and trafficking ring.
Beautifully drawn, and beautifully written, this story has a pace that is unparalleled. Modern Glasgow at its finest, with a flawed, contradictory hero who pulls at the heart strings. This story is not to be missed.
KILLINGS IN NOVEMBER Simon Mason (Riverrun £14.99, 352pp)
A KILLING IN NOVEMBER
by Simon Mason (Riverrun £14.99, 352pp)
Forget Inspector Morse, this Oxford-based story features DI Ryan Wilkins: young, mouthy and born in a caravan park, he’s no respecter of persons or position and arrives in the city under a cloud of suspicion.
On his first day he stumbles upon a murder in (fictional) St Barnabas’s college, where the body of a young woman has been left in the Provost’s office while he is entertaining a powerful Arab Sheik who might donate a huge sum to the college.
The investigation into the death shows Wilkins in his true colours — irascible, intuitive and quick as lightning. His colleague, a Balliol graduate with a taste for expensive jackets, is appalled by Wilkins’ approach. They prove, however that an iconoclastic outsider is possible to trust. The TV series is already in place.
THE GOSLING GIRL
THE GOSLING GIRL Jacqueline Roy (S&S £14.99, 400pp)
by Jacqueline Roy (S&S £14.99, 400pp)
Michelle Cameron was a teenage black girl who killed Kerry for no apparent reason fourteen years ago.
It was a crime described as evil by the media — think James Bulger. Now, she’s out and trying to rebuild herself.
She manages to do so until a young friend, sex worker Lucy, is found dead — in a hoodie that belongs to Michelle.
The police make her a suspect and reveal her address and identity to them. Michelle is cleared, but the damage is done, and a black policewoman, DC Natalie Tyler, tries to protect her from the world’s suspicions.
Written with compassion, and an exceptional sense of identity by Roy — born to a Jamaican father and a British mother — it is both striking and powerful.
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