The Long Glasgow Kiss

 

“If there’s one thing I can say about your veiled threats, Superintendent, it’s that they’re all threat and no veil.” The cynical, wise-cracking private eye has a long tradition in the US – think Chandler, Spillane and Hammett – but Craig Russell is one of few British writers to have successfully transplanted the concept into a milieu still largely overshadowed by Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie. This second novel to feature the Glasgow-born Canadian and Second World War veteran Lennox, it remains an effective introduction for a man who doesn’t really like himself but understands how well-suited he is to his current environment, with Russell skillfully filling in whatever back story you need to know. With some remarkably light strokes, he also puts you right beneath that ‘ship-iron sky’ that overshadows the ‘mend-and-make-do’ city that was 1950s Glasgow – as near a Wild West as you can imagine with vicious crime kings, stupid thugs and just as nasty cops. Full of sharply defined characters, this gripping tale of murder, boxing, missing persons and big criminality is equally involving as a portrait of a Second City of the Empire that really was another world – a mere 60 years away. [Paul F Cockburn]