A Son of the Rock

Robinson, 2019, 377 p.

Following on from Life For a Life I would most likely never have looked at this, crime fiction not really being my thing, except that  the good lady had borrowed it from the local library so I thought I might as well.

A fishing boat washed up on Tentsmuir beach is found to contain a body restrained by wire in such a way that any movement would have resulted in a slow death. The boat belonged to Joe Christie who had disappeared – along with the boat – several years ago. The victim isn’t Christie though but Stooky Dee, an alleged associate of big Jock Shepherd, Scotland’s criminal kingpin. Muir makes much use of italicising alleged in the book in relation to Shepherd’s activities. DCI Andy Gilchrist, based in St Andrews, investigates the case.

Gilchrist has problems with his adult children and difficulties with the forensic pathologist Dr Rebecca Cooper whose brief liaison with him she cut off when she decided to reconcile with her husband. These attempts to humanise our hero are something of a distraction from the main plot. There is a nice moment, though, when Gilchrist tells his daughter when she says he knows how to talk to women as if he knows what they’re thinking, “No man knows what any woman is thinking.”

It soon turns out others of Shepherd’s henchmen, Cutter Boyd and Hatchet McBirn, have been killed recently but it seems the police in Strathclyde, Shepherd’s main area of operations, do not want Gilchrist muscling in on the case.

Further complications arise from Gilchrist’s DS Jessie Janes’s brother Tommy – on the run accused of murder, though Jessie doesn’t think he did it – contacting her about information he wants to give her.

All is mixed up with a big drug deal the Strathclyde force – along with HM Government – is hoping will lead to the arrests of major dealers, for which they send DI Fox, a supercilious creature to retrieve the case files from Fife.

Things become a bit too conspiracy laden when Gilchrist and (Jessie) Janes are tied up in a lock-up garage in Anstruther before a shoot-out resolves their problem.

This book confirmed that modern crime fiction is not for me. I doubt I’ll sample Muir’s work again. (It’s also enough to give anyone an aversion to visiting Fife.)

Pedant’s corner:- “to go back onboard” (back on board,) “a dumpster” (not a UK term. Muir’s sojourn in the US has got to him. We say ‘skip’, or [maybe] ‘wheelie-bin’,) “as if everyone …. were indoors” (as if everyone  … was indoors,) “driven to the scrappies and dumped” (not a plural; a possessive: ‘to the scrappy’s’.) “Capisci?” (it’s spelled ‘Capisce’,) “right from the get-go” (‘right from the start’; please,) “when the caller finally gave out” (gave up,) “that all was not well” (that not all was well.)