Author:Irvine Welsh
The third novel in the Crime series, following on from 2022’s The Long Knives, sees Ray Lennox out of the police force and relocated from Edinburgh to Brighton, hoping to restart his life with a new career and a fresh relationship. However, it seems it’s not so easy to escape the past, as a chance encounter with a local businessman inexorably draws him back to a childhood he’s desperate to forget. Digging into the disappearance of a number of foster children forces him to remember and re-evaluate events from his own youth, as the full truth of those traumatic events is gradually revealed. The captivating tale moves along at a good pace with plenty of the author’s trademark black humour to go alongside the horrifying events, past and present, that are dragged into the light of day as long forgotten memories are reawakened. An exciting and unexpected climax cleverly ties up all the loose ends, with the denouement not being revealed until the very final pages. A good addition to the Welsh canon, but I wonder if this is the last we’ll hear of Ray Lennox,
Length of Read:Long
Might appeal to people who enjoyed…
Other novels by Welsh, especially the previous ones in the Crime series.
One thing you’ve learned
The novel for me had something of the feel of the much earlier work ‘Filth’, a novel in which Lennox also appears as a minor character, with its portrayal of a tormented man at war with himself.
Anyone who has watched either of the two TV series that cover the earlier two volumes, should be asssured the books are way better.
The mention of the superb ‘Filth’ is enough to make me want to read this. I managed to get though a third of The Long Knives before giving up in boredom. Filth was genuinely nasty and unafraid to dig deep. The successive Lennox books seem to be getting weaker as they go on, rather like those Patricia Cornwell’s Scarpetta series, where the protagonist and her immediate circle reappear in increasingly ludicrous circumstances every time
This is a cracking read, best in the series I’d say
Irvine is a genius, I don’t think he’s written a bad book, even the average ones are worth a read
I don’t know – I found the re-emergence of Begbie as a reformed character as a Californian artist a bit of a leap of faith