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quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
Never rush it.
A twenty-nine-year-old man lives alone in his Glasgow flat. The telephone rings, a casual conversation, but behind this a job offer. The clues are there if you know to look for them.
He is an expert. A loner. Freelance. Another job is another job, but what if this organization wants more?
A meeting at a club. An offer. A brief. A target: Lewis Winter.
It’s easy to kill a man. It’s hard to kill a man well. People who do it well know this. People who do it badly find out the hard way. The hard way has consequences …
29-year-old Callum MacLean is a hit man in Glasgow. He works freelance for the city’s various crime organisations and he’s known for being good at his work. When Frank MacLeod, a senior gunman working for Peter Jamieson’s organisation needs a hip replacement, he suggests that Jamieson use MacLean for a job he needs doing. Lewis Winter – a middle-aged drug dealer who’s always been a small time loser – is encroaching on Jamieson’s territory and he seems to have serious backing. Jamieson wants him taken out. MacLean takes the job but he’s worried that it’ll lead to Jamieson wanting more from him, more than he’s willing to give …
Malcolm Mackay’s debut crime thriller is a tightly written, taut Tartan noir tale of hit men and crime syndicates in Glasgow. I loved the clipped, efficient writing style and the way Mackay swaps between the different characters to flesh out the seedy, violent world in which they operate. The plot itself is slim – it’s all about the hit and the aftermath – but the psychologies at play and the way the characters make decisions based on the information available to them kept me gripped. These are not nice people and Mackay is quick to strip away the supposed glamour of their sordid lives but at the same time, it’s very easy to empathise with their dilemmas, particularly Callum, a cold, emotionless loner who knows the perils of getting too close to an organisation. All in all, I thought this was a great book that kept me hooked from beginning to end and I will definitely be reading the sequel.
I liked the way Mackay spreads the action between the various player in the tale – my favourite chapters being those featuring Callum, Lewis and Lewis’s girlfriend, Zara as they provide additional information on each other’s characters and the background to this situation. Even though the plot’s pretty simple, there’s a lot of tension here both from the build up and the aftermath and I enjoyed the politics at play between the different criminal organisations and the way that each character seeks to use other people for their own ends. Although the book works as a stand-alone story, there’s still a lot of potential through the wider storyline of the threat to Jamieson’s organisation for the wider trilogy, which I will definitely be checking out.
The Verdict:
Malcolm Mackay’s debut crime thriller is a tightly written, taut Tartan noir tale of hit men and crime syndicates in Glasgow. I loved the clipped, efficient writing style and the way Mackay swaps between the different characters to flesh out the seedy, violent world in which they operate. The plot itself is slim – it’s all about the hit and the aftermath – but the psychologies at play and the way the characters make decisions based on the information available to them kept me gripped. These are not nice people and Mackay is quick to strip away the supposed glamour of their sordid lives but at the same time, it’s very easy to empathise with their dilemmas, particularly Callum, a cold, emotionless loner who knows the perils of getting too close to an organisation. All in all, I thought this was a great book that kept me hooked from beginning to end and I will definitely be reading the sequel.
A twenty-nine-year-old man lives alone in his Glasgow flat. The telephone rings, a casual conversation, but behind this a job offer. The clues are there if you know to look for them.
He is an expert. A loner. Freelance. Another job is another job, but what if this organization wants more?
A meeting at a club. An offer. A brief. A target: Lewis Winter.
29-year-old Callum MacLean is a hit man in Glasgow. He works freelance for the city’s various crime organisations and he’s known for being good at his work. When Frank MacLeod, a senior gunman working for Peter Jamieson’s organisation needs a hip replacement, he suggests that Jamieson use MacLean for a job he needs doing. Lewis Winter – a middle-aged drug dealer who’s always been a small time loser – is encroaching on Jamieson’s territory and he seems to have serious backing. Jamieson wants him taken out. MacLean takes the job but he’s worried that it’ll lead to Jamieson wanting more from him, more than he’s willing to give …
Malcolm Mackay’s debut crime thriller is a tightly written, taut Tartan noir tale of hit men and crime syndicates in Glasgow. I loved the clipped, efficient writing style and the way Mackay swaps between the different characters to flesh out the seedy, violent world in which they operate. The plot itself is slim – it’s all about the hit and the aftermath – but the psychologies at play and the way the characters make decisions based on the information available to them kept me gripped. These are not nice people and Mackay is quick to strip away the supposed glamour of their sordid lives but at the same time, it’s very easy to empathise with their dilemmas, particularly Callum, a cold, emotionless loner who knows the perils of getting too close to an organisation. All in all, I thought this was a great book that kept me hooked from beginning to end and I will definitely be reading the sequel.
I liked the way Mackay spreads the action between the various player in the tale – my favourite chapters being those featuring Callum, Lewis and Lewis’s girlfriend, Zara as they provide additional information on each other’s characters and the background to this situation. Even though the plot’s pretty simple, there’s a lot of tension here both from the build up and the aftermath and I enjoyed the politics at play between the different criminal organisations and the way that each character seeks to use other people for their own ends. Although the book works as a stand-alone story, there’s still a lot of potential through the wider storyline of the threat to Jamieson’s organisation for the wider trilogy, which I will definitely be checking out.
The Verdict:
Malcolm Mackay’s debut crime thriller is a tightly written, taut Tartan noir tale of hit men and crime syndicates in Glasgow. I loved the clipped, efficient writing style and the way Mackay swaps between the different characters to flesh out the seedy, violent world in which they operate. The plot itself is slim – it’s all about the hit and the aftermath – but the psychologies at play and the way the characters make decisions based on the information available to them kept me gripped. These are not nice people and Mackay is quick to strip away the supposed glamour of their sordid lives but at the same time, it’s very easy to empathise with their dilemmas, particularly Callum, a cold, emotionless loner who knows the perils of getting too close to an organisation. All in all, I thought this was a great book that kept me hooked from beginning to end and I will definitely be reading the sequel.
