Laidlaw

⚖The case for it

You know the killer before you have settled into your chair, and McIlvanney keeps Camus and Kierkegaard in Laidlaw's desk drawer so you never forget it. If you came for a whodunit, leave now. What he is actually writing is Glasgow: its tenements, its hard men, the way a city can love and maim the same person before lunch. Suspense was never the engine here; the book runs on grief and on what a single death does to everyone it touches. Rankin walked through the door this novel opened, and the original still sounds better than most of what came after.

— the honest librarian

✕The case against

Laidlaw keeps Camus and Kierkegaard in his desk drawer, and McIlvanney makes sure every chapter reminds you. The detective speaks in aphorisms no working polisman ever produced, the killer is known from the opening pages (so suspense is off the table), and the women exist to grieve or tempt. Tartan noir's founding text, with the founder's overwriting included.

— the honest librarian