Great Reads for Great Readers

 

In a Place of Darkness, by Stuart MacBride.

 

            Angus MacVicar, on his first day on the job as a newly-promoted Detective Constable, is fizzing with anticipation and enthusiasm, especially as a serial-killer seems to be targeting his Scottish home city of Oldcastle. In fact, the murders are so similar in their brutality and deviousness that a renowned FBI forensic psychologist has been called in to give his esteemed advice – Oldcastle will be famous!  Or infamous, depending upon how you look at such things.  Regardless, it’s a new day for Angus, and it gets even better when he learns that he will be meeting the FBI Expert at the Airport and accompanying him to his very posh(for Oldcastle) hotel, then to meet all of Angus’s BigWig bosses.

            In an ideal world.  The first shock for Angus is that Dr Jonathan Fife suffers from a form of dwarfism and is 4ft 5inches tall. As Angus is pushing 6’6” he feels somehow at a disadvantage:  surely someone could have let him know! But what would such knowledge gain?  That’s right:  sweet FA.  And Dr Fife is not thrilled to be in Bonnie Scotland, either, in fact he hates everything about it:  the weather (always raining), the food, the accents, the dead-loss policing, and the complete lack of computer skills employed by so-called police experts.  No wonder this guy is literally getting away with murder every time – it’s almost impossible not to!  The Press have baptised the killer The Fortnight Killer because a new horribly tortured body has turned up every two weeks and the corpse’s partner disappears, never to be seen again:  surely Dr Fife with all his expertise could contribute valuable insights, instead of bitching and moaning about everything, to the extent that Angus has been delegated as his Minder and driver and Anything Else You’d Like, Sir, because Angus is lowly.  And new. 

            And getting very sick of sarcastic, loudmouth little shortarses – until he realises that behind all the bluster and smartassery is a mind like a steel trap, keenly analytical and not afraid to follow investigative paths which initially seem to lead nowhere – until they reveal all at the end of the tunnel.

            And it goes without saying that death waits at the end of the tunnel, too, unless the unlikely Dynamic Duo of MacVicar and Fife can change the outcome, in the best tradition of all of MacBride’s excellent crime novels. He is superb at combining dark humour and violence;  his characters are all entirely credible, and he writes of his environment with affection and honesty.  (it never stops raining!)  And it would be great if these two singular characters are the start of a new series – sure hope so!  FIVE STARS.