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In a brooding and rain-swept Scottish city weighed down by a history divergent from the one we know, crime and corruption run rampant.
About the author
Malcolm Mackay was born in Stornoway on Scotland's Isle of Lewis. His first novel, The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter, won the ITV Crime Thriller Award, and was short-listed for several other prizes, including an Edgar Award and a CWA Dagger. His second novel, How a Gunman Says Goodbye, won the Deanston Scottish Crime Book of the Year Award. Mackay still lives in Stornoway.
Summary
The independent kingdom of Scotland flourished until the beginning of the last century. Its great trading port of Challaid, in the north west of the country, sent ships around the world and its merchants and bankers grew rich on their empire in Central America.
But Scotland is not what it was, and the docks of Challaid are almost silent. The huge infrastructure projects collapsed, like the dangerous railway tunnels under the city. And above ground the networks of power and corruption are all that survive of Challaid's glorious past.
Darian Ross is a young private investigator whose father, an ex cop, is in prison for murder. He takes on a case brought to him by a charismatic woman, Maeve Campbell. Her partner has been stabbed; the police are not very curious about the death of a man who laundered money for the city's criminals. Ross is drawn by his innate sense of justice and his fascination with Campbell into a world in which no-one can be trusted.
Additional text
This alternative world becomes the setting for a typically hardboiled MacKay narrative' West Highland Free Press.
