Laidlaw

Even if you only occasionally visit the crime genre, you’re acquainted with the depressive, philosophical, highly capable but unconventional police detective. But that vast brotherhood springs from a few common ancestors. When award-winning Scottish novelist McIlvanney turned to crime-writing in the 1970s, he created Jack Laidlaw—a man so dour even his best friends find him too much to take sometimes—and became the patriarch of Tartan Noir. And while Mcilvanney may not be the originator of hard-boiled banter, he was one of its most fluent practitioners. In a story set among the gangsters and wanna-bes of working-class Glasgow, there is only one scene of physical violence. Action unfolds through conversation—each discussion an improvisation with the brutal finesse of a prize fight. Recommended for fans of Benjamin Black and Dennis Lehane. —Liz
P.S. Laidlaw is the first of a trilogy so revered by McIlvanney’s literary descendants that bestseller Ian Rankin has completed a Laidlaw prequel that McIlvanney left unfinished, coming this fall.