Michael J Malone’s first novel in what I hope will be a long
series was very good; this, the second, is even better. Its structure is more
adventurous, alternating two closely connected narrative threads, one in the
first, the other in the third person. There’s a constant tension in both of
them. They share the goal of identifying someone who targets young boys and
stopping them before it’s too late, but each has other tensions specific to its
characters. In one, the parents live their own nightmares as they feel
responsible for the harm that has been or might be done to their sons and that
they may do one another, but in the other, D. I. McBain is still being haunted
by his own terrors which the resolution of the plot in the first book, Blood Tears, failed to banish.
The whole novel is saturated with guilt and, paradoxically,
those pursuing the obviously ‘guilty’ perpetrator of the crimes against wee
boys, while unable to shed their own feelings of responsibility for events, are
able to see that the perpetrator’s motives may perhaps be explicable. The
reader, too, knows right from wrong and yet is drawn into sharing the
characters’ feelings of moral ambiguity.
McBain himself, while relating his version of events in
relatively simple, direct terms, betrays the complexity of his character and is
still the wilfully perverse copper we met in book one. He’s forever questioning
his own notions of love, fidelity, responsibility and his relationships with
others are precarious.
So there’s guilt, pain and darkness everywhere and they
threaten to overwhelm innocence. And yet it’s a book full of humour. McBain’s
one-liners are priceless (but those of his colleagues often match them). And
then there’s his way with metaphor and, yes, poetic turns of phrase which
complement his mastery of Glasgow
street talk. It all makes him the fascinating,
attractive core of a book that asks lots of questions, answers the ones we need
to be answered, but still leaves us with plenty to think about.
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