2012 collection of two police procedural stories, tartan noir, in the
Logan McRae series. Life goes from bad to worse in Police Scotland.
The first story, "DI Steel's Bad Heir Day", has Steel and DC
Guthrie try to track down a missing person. And it seems that
someone's left Steel a large sum of money, but she isn't happy about
it, possibly because the deceased "worked as an enforcer for the
McLeods, Wee Hamish Mowat, and Malk the Knife" and he wanted a
eulogy from her.
The missing person is really background to this, though it fills in a
little corroborative detail; mostly the story's about Steel's decision
on how to reconcile the money with her need to be at least a slightly
honest cop.
The second story, "Stramash", has Logan called to Jura. Steel is on a
very definitely non-police holiday with her wife, but she's seen
someone in the hotel bar who's widely thought to be dead, which is the
only reason the police weren't still looking for him. And several other
crooks who really aren't on speaking terms. Why aren't they murdering
each other. and why are they here? Good fun and while there may be
commendations coming nobody ends up looking particularly good in the
ways that matter.
Slight, but satisfying.
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