2024 supernatural mystery in modern Edinburgh, thirteenth in Oswald's
Inspector McLean series. An old man has a heart attack in an
abandoned church; barely worth the police's time. But he turns out to
have been a retired criminal, and then one of his old friends dies in
the same way…
It's been a while since I read one of these books, and perhaps my
expectations have been reset, but I rather enjoyed it, perhaps because
the really blatant magic has been toned down: this time it's just
about at the level of "nobody can account for the exact nature of
these injuries, but it was dark and confused and we can't really be
sure". And that works rather well: without the blatant supernaturalism
of "Louise Cypher" (I still groan), the majority of what's here is a
police procedural, centred now on DS Janie Morrison, since DI McLean
resigned at the end of the last book. He's certainly not out of the
story, though, and nobody but him seems to be surprised that he's not
living well without new mysteries to solve.
There's yet another idiot boss, which may be realistic but after this
many books I find it a bit samey; but most of the focus is on
Morrison, not at all sure that she's ready to be leading a team on a
major investigation like this, and tending to fall back on practical
police work. Meanwhile the uncatchable crime lord who ran with the
dead men back in the day contacts McLean to tell him that this isn't
a turf war, and needs to be taken seriously—but clearly he knows more
about what's going on than he's telling.
I didn't realise it at the time, but this series was probably my first
exposure to Tartan Noir after Brookmyre, and I still very much enjoy
Oswald's writing and world. It's all a bit dirty, some of it is very
bad indeed, but at least some of the police are trying to do the right
thing some of the time. This definitely engendered much better
reactions in me than the previous book, which left me feeling rather
flat.