Maureen’s affair with Douglas Brady was as good as over before she found his butchered body in her flat. It is an inconvenient time for her lover to die, as Maureen has just received confirmation that the woman that he was cheating on with her, is in fact his wife. The timing not only means Maureen cannot confront him with his duplicity, but it also looks like a motive for murder, at least in the eyes of DCI Joe McEwan.
He has questions, but Maureen, like most residents of Garnethill, distrusts the police and says as little as possible. There are people in her life who would not welcome involvement with the law. Instead, she decides to find out for herself who killed Douglas, and why.
And so, we enter Maureen’s world: her dysfunctional family – alcoholic mother, absent father, social climbing sisters, and supportive, albeit criminal, brother; her friends – Liz at work, gay Benny, and motorcycle-leathers-clad Leslie who volunteers at the women’s refuge; her fellow clients at the Rainbow Centre, damaged and vulnerable, and the psychotherapists who work there (now one fewer following Douglas’s demise).
Hampered by these anarchic characters, excessive alcohol, and harassment from the police and Douglas’s mother, who happens to be an MEP, Maureen makes slow but steady progress in unmasking the killer and their motive.
To focus a crime novel on neither the perpetrator nor the detective is a little unusual. Is Maureen a suspect, witness, or victim? She presents a complex character, possibly unreliable, as she carries the burden of the narrative. Resolving her wider issues are as important as solving the crime, though the two inevitably intertwine.
The Glasgow setting
is atmospheric and seems authentic. The characters are colourful, and the pace
is good, bordering on frenetic. By the end relationships are reappraised, and
reckonings doled out, making for a satisfying read.
No comments:
Post a Comment