2015 police procedural mystery, tartan noir, ninth in the Logan
McRae series. As the rescue of a serial killer's victim involves
enough procedural irregularity to lead to the killer's lawyer inducing
reasonable doubt in the jury, Logan gets a "development opportunity"
back in uniform, in rural Aberdeenshire.
This book makes an interesting turn away from the pattern that
MacBride's tended to use so far, in which McRae spends the first
two-thirds or so of the story screwing up and then suddenly turns into
a super-detective towards the end. Rather, he continues to screw up a
little bit all the way through, but the persistence he's been putting
in from the start finally pays off. He comes close to several lines
and crosses some of them, and it's a tribute to MacBride's writing
that I'm still in sympathy with him after all that.
There is a bit more variation in crime this time: a young girl is
found dead in the abandoned Tarlair Outdoor Swimming Pool (an
evocative location even in photographs), some local drug dealers are
doing a half-arsed job of moving up to the big time, and an organised
ram-raiding group seems to be vanishing the moment the robberies have
been committed. At least two of these are Not Logan's Case, something
he will eventually have to learn. It's also pleasing to see the little
bits of "normal" police work that aren't complex investigations or
blue-light chases.
But the characters are getting more complex too, helped by a new cast
of underlings for McRae; even DCI Steel, often portrayed as nothing
but a self-interested slob, remains that but also shows a solid
loyalty to her underlings (at least when it's someone higher up
abusing them rather than her).
There's no sign of Wee Hamish Mowat this time, honestly he wouldn't
have fit, but I have to assume that that situation will return in a
later book.