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LAWLESS
by Alexander McGregor
Black and White Publishing, October 2006
256 pages
10.00 GBP
ISBN: 1845021096


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Alexander McGregor, a Scottish journalist, started off writing true crime. His second book, LAWLESS, has moved into the realms of crime fiction, and it's a highly promising start.

Its hero is Campbell McBride, a Scottish journalist who has made his name writing a true crime book! He's now living in London and making a good living from freelancing. When he returns to his home town of Dundee for a book signing, he is confronted by an angry punter. It turns out that the man's son is in prison for murder – and it's one of the cases mentioned in Campbell's book. The man insists that his son is innocent, and persuades Campbell to visit him in prison and to investigate the case.

Campbell's enquiries soon bring him into contact with DI Petra Novak, the daughter of an old police contact, and as a number of women are murdered, they develop a close working relationship. And then the killer starts to develop a rather unhealthy interest in leaving Campbell clues . . .

In many ways LAWLESS is fairly standard fare – a loner journalist with a tragic past history who won't let threats stand in the way of a good story. Unless you are dozing, you will spot the ending coming quite some way off. And Campbell is rather easily persuaded, with next-to-no evidence, to investigate Bryan Gilzean's case.

But for all that I enjoyed LAWLESS. McGregor, as befits a hack, writes crisp, clean, spare prose. He doesn't bother with anything as complex as a sub-plot, but he keeps the action moving along briskly. The characters are just the right side of under-drawn, although I did enjoy the sparring between Campbell and his old friend and adversary Double Dick! The newspaper stuff is, as you might expect, absolutely authentic.

Dundee is another addition to the growing canon of Scottish crime fiction, although here it lacks the atmosphere of, say, Mina's Glasgow or Rankin's Edinburgh. But LAWLESS is a highly competent fiction debut, and McGregor has given himself plenty of space to develop a series with Campbell and Petra.

Reviewed by Sharon Wheeler, November 2006

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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