William McIlvanney - The Papers of Tiny Veitch

 

 Rating: 5/5

Review:

Exceptionally Good

The Papers Of Tony Veitch is the second in William McIlvanney’s Laidlaw Trilogy. It is recognised as being the origin of Tartan Noir and is a masterclass in how to write detective fiction. It is gripping, thoughtful, almost poetically descriptive at times and paints an extraordinarily vivid and penetrating picture of its setting and characters.

The plot revolves around some of Glasgow’s “hard men,” serious gangsters who have an uneasy alliance when one of their own is stabbed. A complex story develops in which DI Laidlaw becomes almost crusadingly involved when a vagrant he knew is also killed and no-one seems to care much. The contrast between Laidlaw’s sense of decency and humanity and the cynicism of many of those around him is very effective and I found the story very involving. What really sets this above the crowd, though, is McIlvanney’s writing and his brilliant insights into the workings of his city and its people, and his very shrewd observations on all sorts of things. I picked out these few examples at random:

Of a barman who keeps respectfully quiet: “It wasn’t that he knew his place so much as he knew where it wasn’t, which was in hospital.”

“...that clique of mutually supportive opinion s that so often pass for culture.”

Of a new development: “...a warm and vivid slum expensively transformed into a cold and featureless one.”

The book is full of this sort of thing, and I loved it. Many of today’s giants of the genre, including Denise Mina, Ian Rankin and Val McDermid, have praised McIlvanney’s work and it is easy to see why. I think this book (and the trilogy) is exceptionally good and recommend it very warmly.