Daisychain by GJ Moffat

This is Moffat's first novel, and it shows. Daisychain focuses on the trials of Logan Finch, and the death of his former lover and long lost daughter, set against the standard post-industrial cityscape of Glasgow. Any Scottish writer carving out their niche in crime fiction is bound to come up against the big guns of Rankin and MacDiarmid, but Moffat's constant need to prove his credentials gets tiresome. Continually overegging the detail, he often crosses the line between forensically accurate and falls into irrelevant rattling off of facts, and is at pains to establish the thriller as a literary work, with unnecessary references to Burns and To Kill a Mockingbird. Daisychain feels most natural when utilising the procedural language of the police force, and once the reader gets past Moffat's occasionally clunky prose, we are treated to a taut, fast-paced thriller with a precise plot of (mostly) believable characters. Stick with it and be rewarded with twist upon twist, and a final resolution that warrants looking forward to Moffat's subsequent, and hopefully a little more refined, offerings. [Caroline Crew]