Review of Night Watcher

I’ll admit I picked this up primarily because of its Dundee setting. ( I spent some of my childhood there so looked forward to seeing how the place would be described). I’m not a crime thriller aficionado and I was initially surprised by it. The word that kept running read this through my brain as I read on, was ‘domestic’. Not in a bad way, just because I kept thinking ‘if Jane Austen wrote crime fiction this might be the sort of thing she’d write.  While there is the dark outsider, the stalker, the Nightwatcher of the title; the main action seems to revolve around a much more domestic picture and this seems to me to offer some of the strength of the novel.  We are being shown that fear, caused by misuse of power, is at least as devastating when carried out on a domestic level as that caused by the ‘mad’ outsider.  And since we all face fear on that domestic level, it’s a clever move adding a sort of reality to the story. My ‘domestic’ does not mean ‘mundane’ it simply means that the story revolves more around the daily lives, hopes and fears of a bunch of people who you might meet in any department store (where a lot of the novel is set). The detail of description of place and ‘costume’ also puts me in mind of something more domestic.  It would perhaps be ‘mundane’ without the fear factor but the fear factor is the core of the novel.

The Nightwatcher himself is motivated by ‘evil’ and ‘the voice of God’ but the characters in this novel are more influenced by a more domestic version of evil, the power-struggles inherent in relationships, specifically in marital and extra marital relationships.  I found both Nicole and Julie to be ‘nippy sweeties’ and Longmuir is brave in presenting no obvious hero/heroine to drive the story. Even her ‘anti-hero’ remains out of sight for most of the novel, lurking in the background as the personification of unseen fear. Most if not all of her characters are flawed (in the way that real people are) and while one might see Julie as the central protagonist on a redemptive journey, I’m not sure if that’s not stretching the point towards an unnecessary level of analysis.

For me, unused to plot driven stories, I found the ‘set up’ somewhat slow burn, but this was Longmuir’s method, reminiscent of that old Agatha Christie speciality, setting up everyone as a potential suspect.  Once one got to the point in the novel where you were wondering who’s going to die next, and who’s doing all the killing, the pace really sparked up. And of course in the ending, nothing is as it seemed and there was always just one more twist. The ending would surely send crime/thriller readers towards Dead Wood, the ‘sequel’ which won the Dundee Book Prize in 2009, to find out what happens next.  I’m guessing they won’t be disappointed.

 Reviewed by Cally Phillips 

Available in Kindle format

Find out more about Chris Longmuir

Night Watcher by Chris Longmuir

Review by Bill Kirton

Another book which proves that Chris Longmuir, who wrote the prize-winning Dead Wood, knows the ingredients you need for a tense, satisfying crime novel and can put them together in a way that keeps multiplying the cliff-hangers and keeps you asking what will happen next. The story is set in an atmospherically-conveyed Dundee, the people and their contacts are created with those little touches of ‘ordinary’ behaviour that enhances their reality and behind them all, creeping through the book’s shadows, there’s an anonymous figure determined to complete the ‘missions’ set by the voice he hears in his head. He’s introduced in the opening paragraphs as, already responsible for at least one murder, he arrives in the city with his next victim already chosen and an absolute certainty that he’s doing the right thing.

Cleverly, though, some of the ‘normal’, ordinary people who make up the small cast of central characters, are equally driven – by power, lust, revenge – and equally capable (or so it seems) of extreme actions to achieve their aims. Although there are clearly goodies and baddies, trust is in short supply. In their cases, there’s no inner voice urging them to destroy the lives of others, but their motives and impulses are potentially just as deadly. Love is transactional, infidelity is the norm and Longmuir keeps the focus tightly on them as the night watcher observes them from his shadows. The resolution is delayed up to the final pages with not just one twist, but two.

It’s a very enjoyable read from a writer who knows exactly what she’s doing.

Missing Believed Dead by Chris Longmuir

This is the third book in Chris Longmuir's Dundee Crime series but it's the first that I've read. I didn't feel excluded by this however - merely intrigued. 

Detective Sergeant Bill Murphy appears to be shattered by previous experiences and his friend and former partner Detective Inspector Michaels is still in hospital. This means a new DI arriving in the Dundee office – a woman this time. Tough on the Dundee team and tough on DI Kate Rawlings as well. She's been happy in Forfar: Dundee presents a new and daunting challenge. 

Fortunately for working relationships DI Rawlings isn't given much time to antagonise her new colleagues or be antagonised by them. She and her team are swiftly involved in an ongoing investigation which is threatening to spiral out of control. Everyone's skills are needed if a final tragedy is to be averted.

This is competent, confident crime-writing: the sort that keeps the reader wanting just one more chapter ... and another and another. I read with pleasure and almost without pause and I now look forward to catching up on Longmuir's earlier series titles, Night Watcher and Dead Wood.

It's realistic writing too  – though I hope that there are some days in Dundee when it's not either raining, freezing or blowing a gale. Longmuir's tartan is distinctly noir. There's no glamour in this world – typical scenes take place in a sink estate where it's too risky to run your hand up the stair rail because of what might be smeared on it. But at least there's life in the estate, unlike the expensive mansion of a be-wigged and botoxed former actress or the shoddiness of the the pole-dancing club on the morning after when the cleaners come to work. No wonder Diane, the mentally fragile mother whose daughter has gone missing spends every day scrubbing until her hands are raw.

The plot twist is a good one and, although Longmuir doesn't offer a happily-ever-after ending, there is sufficient resolution of the drama and alleviation of the central characters' misery to leave the reader satisfied that ordinary life will go on. 

Until the next time Chris Longmuir picks up her pen, that is.

reviewed by Julia Jones