Laidlaw

⚖The case for it

Laidlaw keeps paperback Kierkegaard, Camus and Unamuno locked in his desk drawer the way another policeman hides a bottle, and he wants the causes of a crime rather than a closed file. The prose is the surprise, dense and metaphor-heavy and measured against Chandler and Simenon. Glasgow is the real subject, mapped from the docks to the mansions with its class lines running straight through the case. A pub confrontation draws comparisons to “the De Niro/Pacino restaurant scene from Heat.” Rankin has said he doubts he would be a crime writer without this book.

— the honest librarian

✕The case against

The Glaswegian dialect stops readers cold in the early chapters, and a number quit there before the voice settles. The pub standoffs then repeat until one reader files them as “rather repetitive scenes of white guys threatening each other in identical pubs.” Anyone wanting a puzzle finds the mystery mechanics thin, since the pleasure is atmosphere and the “ending became sort of a foregone conclusion.” It is “very much a man’s world,” with little agency for the women in it and period attitudes that have dated. And the metaphors become a tic.

— the honest librarian

4h

honest hours

6

sittings