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KEEP THE MIDNIGHT OUT
by Alex Gray
Sphere, January 2016
400 pages
$16.00 CAD
ISBN: 0751554871


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Since 2002 writer Alex Gray has been doing for Glasgow what Ian Rankin has so successfully done for Edinburgh. Recently she launched her twelfth tale in the Lorimer and Brightman series, and it's a corker. With a distinctive setting and a cast of memorable characters, this well-written novel will appeal to readers in search of a fresh take on Scottish crime fiction.

Detective Superintendent William Lorimer and his wife Maggie are vacationing on the Isle of Mull when he discovers a body on the beach near their rented cottage. The victim's wounds suggest he'd been tortured. Once it's reported a DI from Oban is put in charge of the case, and she's none too keen to have a senior officer from Glasgow interfering on her turf. Lorimer is only too happy to bow out, but in the insular community of Tobermory he keeps running across information that inexorably draws him further and further into the investigation.

Lorimer soon realises that the recent death bears some disturbing similarities to a case that, as a young DC, he'd investigated twenty years earlier in Glasgow. That death had gone unsolved, and he can't help wondering whether the two might be connected.

Before long the beach victim is identified. He's a mainlander from Glasgow, working his summer off at a local tourist hotel while on a break from his university studies. New to the island, there seems no reason why anyone there would mark him out for murder.

The well-paced narrative is layered by a poignant sub-plot: Lorimer and his wife are still grieving over their stillborn child. A death on their doorstep, especially one involving a young man, is not something either one of them want to face.

The story alternates between the contemporary case and the twenty-year-old Glasgow murder, deftly drawing readers into both stories, and causing them to wonder until near the very end whether the two deaths are actually connected or whether the author is playing an especially adroit game of cat-and-mouse. A literate and atmospheric tale, KEEP THE MIDNIGHT OUT will send readers back to Gray's earlier works in the series, and earn her many new fans.

§ Since 2005 Jim Napier's reviews and interviews have appeared in several Canadian newspapers and on various crime fiction and literary websites, including his own award-winning site, Deadly Diversions. He can be reached at jnapier@deadlydiversions.com

Reviewed by Jim Napier, December 2015

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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