2016 police procedural mystery, tartan noir, tenth in the Logan
McRae series. A missing-persons investigation has just turned up a
body in the woods, killed and arranged in a very specific way
associated with a particular out-of-town drug boss. And Wee Hamish
Mowat, who's ruled Aberdeen's underworld for years, is on his deathbed…
And this is where some of the multi-book build-up pays off: Logan
has been on the fringes of Mowat's world for a while (with a careful
line drawn; he'll use Mowat's tips to bust rivals but he's free to
arrest Mowat's own dealers if he can catch them), but generally the
parts of the stories that deal with this have been separate from the
parts that deal with his normal police investigations. But here they
are clearly tied together: if it was indeed Malk the Knife's
hypothetical pet psychopath who killed Peter Shepherd, then Malk is
making a move into Aberdeen, and Mowat's in no position to do anything
about it.
Also, Mowat's main lieutenant thinks he should have been given the
boss's blessing to take over the criminal empire (especially since
Logan really doesn't want it), and is clearly going to try to kill
Logan and anyone he likes once Mowat is dead. Is Logan actually going
to murder him first? Is he the sort of person who can do that?
And Samantha, Logan's girlfriend who's been in a coma since book 4,
has finally got to the point that there's no hope for further medical
intervention, and it's time to end things.
And Logan gets moved onto DI Steel's major investigation team
without his say-so, and when a new detective superintendent is brought
in to take over because of the possible link to Malk the Knife, she
seems to have it in for Logan specifically for no obvious reason.
And Chief Superintendent Napier of Professional Standards is still
sniffing around, on the edge of retirement and perhaps out to ruin one
last officer's career before he goes.
It all comes together, and that's the real trick. Some of these
elements have gone along in the background for several books, some
have been omitted completely from time to time, but here they all line
up and largely get resolved. I particularly enjoyed the moments in
which Logan, left alone with a tight-lipped suspect, was able to tell
them something off the record that led to them suddenly becoming much
more voluble… but he could never tell any of the rest of the force
what it was or how he knew it.
Altogether, and from the perspective of someone who's been reading
this series from the beginning, I very much enjoyed this.