Author:Stuart MacBride
Following hot on the heels of the recent short form novel ‘And The Corpse Wore Tartan’, we have here a full length story featuring DI Roberta Steel and her trusty sidekick ‘Tufty’ Quirrel. With retirement just a few short weeks away, all she wants to do is quietly see out the final days of a thirty year career policing Aberdeen’s seedy underbelly before riding off into the sunset. However, it seems the North East of Scotland doesn’t want her to go gently into the good night. A body is discovered in a wheelie bin, there’s a violent protest to deal with and the unwelcome presence of a populist far right politician looms large, all made more challenging by a large proportion of her colleagues being off sick. It seems these final few weeks may be the death of her! This is another darkly comic tale from MacBride, which simultaneously manages to incorporate a captivating police procedural while making some pertinent points about today’s broken society. There’s even a cameo appearance from Logan MacRae along the way, so what’s not to like? All in all, another really enjoyable page turner from one of the masters of this genre!
Length of Read:Long
Might appeal to people who enjoyed…
While this can be read as a standalone novel, it really works best if you’ve read at least some of the preceding books featuring this long running cast of characters.
One thing you’ve learned
I wonder if this is really the final curtain for DI Steel, or if we’ll see more of her in future in some guise or other. Only time will tell, but in the meantime the author has given her a fitting send off in this enthralling 600 page epic.
Great review Bargepole Stuart is one of my favourite authors so I will be definitely getting this.