Polygon, 2004, 230 p, plus 4 p Introduction by James Meek. First published 1960.

Like Dust on the Paw, this is a fruit of the author’s time in Afghanistan, and paints a portrait of the country in the late 1950s, some of its people yearning for modernity but with pockets of utter poverty in its most rural areas.

Our viewpoint character is a Scotsman only ever named as McLeod, a diplomat between posts, returned to Afghanistan after a time away. In his previous term there he had formed an attachment to Karima, an Afghan woman he had thought to marry. However, he did not own the many thousands of sheep her father deemed necessary in a prospective son-in-law.

He is interested in the fate of a former friend, Donald Kemp, who has gone missing along with his female companion, Margaret Duncan. The authorities are anxious to convince him they were both murdered: indeed, a village has been punished for the crime, with two of its men in jail in the city awaiting execution. McLeod has his doubts and, against the wishes both of the authorities and the diplomats sets out to see whether the pair are still alive. In the village concerned he finds, “as everywhere in this country, a mixture of pathos and sinisterness.”

A local Commandant confides in him and in their conversation compares the Bible and the Koran. “‘Everything is in it that suits you. If you wish to kill your enemy, search through the pages, and you will find sanction. If you wish to forgive him and love him like a brother you will find sanction for that too. A man takes his choice of what God advises.’”

About the human condition McLeod thinks, “No wonder the Koran and the Bible, advising human beings, had to give such contradictory advice.”

Despite being set in Afghanistan this is unmistakably a Scottish novel. On the journey McLeod’s thoughts compare the landscape to parts of Scotland such as Edinburgh Castle and the mountains of Wester Ross, he thinks of a local headman as glaikit, hears a voice call to him in Gaelic, and also remembers Margaret Duncan’s parents referring to the bad fire.

Yet its conclusions and themes are universal.

(There are occasional references reflecting the times it was written, one boy at a school is “slant-eyed,” another “hooknosed, Semitic.”)

Pedant’s corner:- In the Introduction; Jenkins’ (x 3, Jenkins’s.) Otherwise: brief-cases (briefcases,) basket-ball (x 2, basketball,) Chiang Kaishek (usually written Chiang Kai Shek,) “he had to breath …. through his mouth” (breathe,) “hair-pin bends” (hairpin.)

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 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.)

Little Brown, 2016, 440 p.

In this (fourth) instalment of the cases of DCI Karen Pirie she is still trying to get over the death of her romantic (and former professional) partner Phil Paratka, murdered in the line of duty in The Skeleton Road. Unable to sleep properly she strolls the backways of Edinburgh at night, particularly the Restalrig railway path.

We start, though, with Ross Garvie, a joyriding teenager, whose exploits lead to him killing his three passengers in a crash and only surviving himself in a deep coma.

Then we meet (briefly) Gabriel Abbott, an obsessive about exploitation in the third world unburdening his worries about a Thai correspondent of his to a friend in a pub in Kinross.

Garvie’s DNA provides a familial hit to the murder of Tina MacDonald in Glasgow years before, thus giving Pirie’s cold case unit a lead, but complicated by the fact Garvie was adopted and accessing the original birth certificate is all but legally forbidden.

Then Abbott is found murdered on the path by Loch Leven from Kinross. It turns out his mother was killed by a bomb on a light aircraft years before – an atrocity blamed at the time on the IRA despite the crude MO not being a fit. Pirie does not believe in such coincidences but the local officer has dismissed Abbott’s death as a suicide.

Cue much treading on toes as Pirie sets out to solve both cases and the aircraft bombing, ignoring protocol as is her wont.

A sub-plot involving Syrian refugees she meets on the railway path who have nowhere they can meet up manages to entwine with the main one near the end.

I suppose this is pretty standard police procedural (or in Pirie’s case non-procedural) fare but McDermid keeps the pages turning.

Pedant’s corner:-  “none of them were worried” (none of them was worried,) “Lees’ reward” (Lees’s reward,) “macaroon bars made traditionally with icing sugar and mashed potatoes” (McDermid is here misrepresenting for comic effect, macaroon bars are not made from mashed potato,) congratulations for the subscripts in H₂O and H₂SO₄, “where the leak sprung from” (sprang from.) “Noble shook head” (shook his head,) snuck (horrible USianism; ‘sneaked’, please.)

Constable, 2013, 394 p. First published 2007.

There is a certain sameness to modern crime fiction; which is to say modern detective fiction. Gone are the days of the gentleman sleuth such as Poirot or Wimsey, and the even more gentle woman, Miss Marple, solving crimes almost at leisure and in relatively salubrious surroundings. Now we have the hard-bitten, hardened police detective dealing with contemporary (well, in this case twelve years old) psychopathic criminality in all its grisly detail.

I would not normally have read this but it is set almost exclusively in Fife, where I live, (with such familiar locations as Boarhills, Kingsbarns, Crail and St Andrews,) and was recommended by our nearest local librarian as an introduction to the author prior to his visit to the library this November. Suitably enough it was published by Constable.

The short Chapter One features a young woman fleeing from a brutal captivity along a Fife coastal path on a freezing night. That is the last time we are given her point of view. It is her body DCI Andy Gilchrist, a widower, and his new DS Jessica (Jessie) Janes, are called to investigate a few days later, dead from a blow to the head, possibly after a fall from the path, and subsequent exposure. They trace her back to a cottage in Kingsbarns where they find two more young women dead, decapitated, and evidence of enslavement into prostitution.

Janes has a sideline in stand-up comedy which she undertakes to try out jokes written by her deaf son, Robert. Her mother has a criminal record but is a constant thorn in her side trying to gain legal access to Robert.  Gilchrist and the forensic pathologist Dr Rebecca Cooper have a mutual attraction complicated by the fact that she is married to someone else (albeit not happily). One of the other female detectives has a problematic relationship with a man who turns out to be unknowingly involved in the case, another has a booze problem.

I thought Janes’s background as teased out by Gilchrist in their conversations and his investigations into her mother’s origins would have made it unlikely for her ever to have been accepted into the police but maybe their standards aren’t too high these days.

This is pretty much the standard police procedural offering but some of the details were perhaps unnecessarily gruesome (of course this may be what the crime fiction market now demands) and there was a cliffhanger scene which stretched credulity by being kept going too long.

On putting this book onto my Library Thing account I found this was actually DC Gilchrist’s fourth appearance in print. I may try one more to confirm my thoughts that it’s not really my thing.

Pedant’s corner:- In the Acknowledgements “whne” (when.) Otherwise; “change in tack” (x 3, the phrase is usually ‘change of tack’,) “chaffed and reddened by a cold Scottish wind” (chafed and reddened,) “all was not as it seemed” (not all was as it seemed,) “oblivious of his presence” (it’s ‘oblivious to’ not ‘oblivious of’,) “as his drove on” (as he drove on,) “the Kingsbarns’ killings” (Kingsbarns here is adjectival, not possessive; ‘the Kingsbarns killings’,) two police acronyms used and immediately explained within two lines (both could have been avoided or worked around without loss of clarity,) “not to help him breath” (help him breathe,) facia (fascia,) “and looked at Gilchrist’s way” (and looked Gilchrist’s way,) “seemed to be order of the day” (to be the order of the day) “toodle-do” (the formulation is usually ‘toodle-oo’.)

Travellers’ Library, 1931, 315 p

This is a collection of poems and short stories set in Ancient Greece among the wars between Athens and Sparta. The stories range in date from 500 BC, to 498 BC, 461 BC, 456 BC, 446 BC, 427 BC, 415 BC, 412 BC, 399 BC, 396 BC, 374 BC and finally 373 BC. A few of the poems directly relate to those times but a couple are not so specific.

We start things off with two poems and then each story is followed by a single poem until the last, designated as a song.

Mitchison’s usual facility as a writer is in evidence. There is nothing particularly startling in the contents and she seems to know these times well though bearing her research lightly, but then she did cover similar ground in Cloud Cuckoo Land, and set other books in ancient times: The Corn King and the Spring Queen, Travel Light, Blood of the Martyrs.

She is perhaps strongest when focusing on relationships involving women – the one where one man deceives an ingenuous young girl for his own ends could resonate still, women’s care for each other is displayed but not overly stressed – though those between men are also given weight, in the title story an act of kindness which could be seen as treason being neatly resolved.

While the Ancient Greeks reverence for poetry is not mirrored nowadays there is no reason to suppose human nature two and a half thousand years ago was any different to today. These stories could underline that perfectly.

Pedant’s corner:- shrunk (shrank,) “Hippokleas’ shoulder” (Hippokleas’s: all names ending in s are given s’ as their possessive rather than s’s,) a missing comma before a piece of direct speech, “by and bye” (‘by and by’ as it was rendered later,) a missing end quotation mark after a piece of dialogue (x 2.)

Vintage, 2023, 343 p

Lux was brought up by her mother in a house by the forest. Her mother was a healer and maker of poppets and possets, subject to suspicion because her baby had arrived suddenly with no man on the scene. Her mother gone, and Lux returned to the house after a sojourn in a sanctuary subject to strict religious rules, she is living alone when a woman, Else, arrives seeking her help to poison the local lord “‘who calls women witches so that he has an excuse to kill them.’” That same night Lux’s house is attacked by some of the local boys. They are driven off by a wolf, which may be Else in transfigured form, but not before the house is set on fire. Lux and Else set off together into the forest. The rest of the tale follows both – but mainly Lux – until she eventually finds employment in the lord’s castle, with Else tending to the herb/poison garden, and their misadventures there. I note here that Logan attributes to the lady of the manor more agency than a woman in her situation is likely to have had.

After a “Before” prologue which is unpunctuated (apart from dashes) and printed in italics and with no capital letters, the story is told in five parts. Parts One and Three have section titles all beginning with “Now She Is” followed by one word (in order these were Outcast, Prey, Maiden, Servant, Sacrifice, Whore, Poisoner.)

Part Two is “Lux’s Story” and is given to us also unpunctuated and printed in italics with no capital letters (apart from the words He and Him when describing the lover she had in the sanctuary.) Part Four, “Else’s story,” was similarly unpunctuated but had capital letters where appropriate.

Part Five’s sections have no titles and are in numbered order.

We are here, though, firmly in default faux-mediæval fantasy territory though there is some additional colour, a land bridge between the south and the north, the sea rising, there has been fire in the sky, poison vapours, ash, a sickness spreading supposedly from the north, whose sign is black roses on the skin.

Logan’s almost relentless theme is man’s inhumanity to woman.  “Women are, as Father Fleck used to tell them at the sanctuary, less intelligent, more suggestible, and have more entry points into their bodies. All those orifices ready for a devil to creep into.” In Else’s story she tells Lux “it turns out all that really matters in this world is what a man wants because you either give it to him or he takes it and gives nothing in return” but “Beauty is dangerous. Beauty has power. Beauty has violence.” She outlines “the only available options, Maiden, Wife, Nun, Widow,” adding, “And I could not be any of these even if I wanted to. But there is one other option for a woman and it is the worst of all. Witch. Witch. Witch.”

The plot unfolds slowly to the point where we find the reason for Else’s attachment to Lux.

I suppose it is difficult to write in a contemporary setting a story about the best option for a woman being a witch but I’m really tired of tales such as this adopting a historical template.

On a sentence level Logan is good and her characterization is more than adequate. The whole thing seemed a little bit by the numbers though.

Pedant’s corner:- “Jesus’ birth” (Jesus’s,) “her tongue would not lay still” (would not lie still,) “aren’t I?” (Logan is Scottish; the correct usage is “amn’t I?”)

Collins, 1950, 510 p, including 2 p Note, 3 p Contents and 4p list of Characters.

This is the second of Barke’s Immortal Memory sequence chronicling the life of Robert Burns. He is now in young adulthood and has moved to the farm of Mossgiel, near Mauchline, with brother Gilbert and the rest of his family. We meet Jean Armour before Burns does, and she is presented as an obedient, dutiful daughter.

Burns is in trouble with the local minister, known as Daddy Auld. He has already fathered a child to Betty Paton, but his penance for this, on the cutty stool, takes place in the nearby parish of Tarbolton since that is where the offence occurred. He was fined one guinea and his sin considered absolved. (This strikes me as akin to those indulgences of the Catholic Church which so enraged the early Protestant reformers.) It is his poems and intellect which most worry Auld, however, who realizes that the best way to undermine Burns will be through his sexual misdemeanours. To that end he enjoins two of his elders, Willie Fisher and James Lamie, to collect evidence against Burns. Fisher is that hypocritical individual about whom Burns would write Holy Willie’s Prayer. (Another long poem, about Mauchline’s Holy Fair, also excites Auld’s ire.)

Burns and his cronies disparage these prurient creatures as the houghmagandie pack, and the fascination of the Church with controlling sexuality (which seems to be the goal of all religions) is noted. “Auld had long been made aware of the peculiar fact that when any of the congregation had to appear on the sessional carpet for a sexual offence, he could count on a full attendance from his lay-shepherds. No other sin so excited their holy zeal for probing into the mystery of the passionate relationship between man and woman and the theological relationship between both and the Presbyterian conception of God.”

When Burns meets Jean he is immediately smitten (though he does have a weakness for imagining himself in love.) Jean’s father dislikes him on reputation alone and has already forbidden her to have anything to do with him. But the attraction is too strong for both of them and she and Burns sign a paper to the effect that they have married. This is without benefit of clergy but would apparently have been recognised legally. He is too poor to support a wife though. The song in the green thorn tree of the book’s title is the one Jean sings at their trysting site.

The inevitable happens and Jean’s father and mother prevail on her to disown him, paper or no. Incensed, Burns turns to Highland Mary (Campbell) for solace and resolves to leave for the Caribbean, arranging a passage for himself and Mary whom he dispatches to Greenock to hide her pregnancy. Some boy, as they say.

In the meantime his poem some of which Barke has Burns conjure up on the spot, have been gaining a reputation and it is arranged for a book of his poetry (Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect) to be published by subscription, or at least promise of payment. He wrestles over which verses to publish as some may be considered too controversial, publishers then, as now, reluctant to take too much of a risk.

Barke’s writing is workmanlike, with occasional veerings into purple prose when describing landscape. Several of the quoted poems have their verses written as speech which detracts from the ability to read them as poems but since Burns was reciting them to others I suppose that’s fair enough. The characterisation is broad brush.

I note that the Church’s strictures against houghmagandie seem to have been spectacularly unsuccessful as several instances of compearing are mentioned in the book – including that of a couple who married before the evidence blossomed, though their marriage did not in any way mitigate the offence. When Burns has to stand for his “fornication” with Jean Armour there is no room on the cutty stool. He is one of five people, including Jean, arraigned on the same day.

Pedant’s corner:- Barke still spells the town Machlin rather than Mauchline, “womankind were crowding in” (womankind is singular; ‘womankind was crowding in’.) Surgeoners! (it was possessive not plural; ‘Surgeoner’s!’,) “knit his brows” (knitted.) “The company were soon in a grand mood” (The company was soon in a grand mood,) staunched (stanched.)

Polygon, 2018, 241 p, plus vii p Introduction by Brian Morton and iv p Foreword. First published 1976.

Some people swear by Spark. For myself I struggle to see what the fuss is about. There is just something about her writing that strikes me as off.

I suspect this one was meant to be a comedic novel. Its tone would certainly suggest that. However, its bittiness and lack of characters with whom the reader can be sympathetic – the book is peopled with an assortment of chancers, frauds, swindlers and charlatans – make it something of a chore to read.

Hubert Mallindaine claims to be a descendant of the union between the Roman Emperor Caligula and the goddess Diana. He is renting a villa at Nemi from Maggie Ratcliffe, fairly recently the new Marchesa di Tullio Friole, who also has a house in the vicinity as well as residences elsewhere. Maggie is much exercised by her collections of jewellery and valuables – paintings, Louis XV chairs etc. The local Italians are not too pleased about these foreigners having houses in the town.

Maggie wishes to evict Hubert but he has various ploys to avoid this, among them setting up a religion based on his claim to be descended from Diana. He treats his secretary Pauline contemptuously and is also systematically replacing Maggie’s paintings and chairs with copies/reproductions.

Maggie meanwhile is having sex with her factotum, Lauro, who is, Brian Morton’s Introduction tells us, “a priapic opportunist” (for which read ‘all-but rapist’) “and kleptomaniac.” In addition, Lauro has fathered a child on a local girl (but blames her as a calculating bitch) and without warning jumps on Maggie’s daughter-in-law Mary, giving her little choice but to succumb to his advance. He tells her that next time she should relax. Not one to brook dissent.

That Introduction describes the motley crew of thieves and conmen surrounding Maggie as, “All as respectably dressed and gentlemanly as the Devil must be in a Scottish narrative.”

Things get murkier as the narrative proceeds; it seems there are other claims on the land the houses are built on, while a dodgy financial adviser worms his way into Maggie’s affairs.

There was a review and article – one each – in The Guardian Weekend supplement on both Sat 07/06/25 and 14/06/25 about the latest biography of Spark (Frances Wilson’s Electric Spark – The Enigma of Muriel Spark. Personally I find her the complete opposite of electric.) The review comments on her elision, “Spark knew what to leave out.” Perhaps it is those “odd gaps” which I find so problematic about her œuvre.

Pedant’s corner:- More than a few USian usages, vide infra.

Inter alia pantyhose (tights,) “a vodka-tonic” (vodka and tonic,) boy-friend/girl-friend (several times: both all one word; boyfriend/girlfriend,) station-wagon (estate car.)

Otherwise; “as if treading a mined field” (why not ‘minefield’?) “set at nought” (set at naught. Nought is the number, zero; naught has the meaning of ‘nothing’,) a missing comma before a piece of direct speech (x 2.)

Polygon, 2021, 123 p.

This is another of Birlinn’s Darkland Tales which re-examine Scotland’s history from a modern perspective.

David Rizzio, secretary to the heavily pregnant Mary, Queen of Scots, was famously murdered in her presence by courtiers – and especially her husband Lord Darnley – jealous of Rizzio’s supposed influence on her.

This recounting of that incident is necessarily told in the present tense in order to underscore the inevitability of the ongoing rush of events once the assassins’ plot had been set in motion – and the inability of Mary or Darnley to affect those events.

Mina manages to invoke the feelings of the various characters she focuses on but usually by telling not showing. Hers is an omniscient narration laden with the benefit of hindsight.

The novella is perhaps mistitled, though. It is not primarily about Rizzio (he is dead by a third of the way through) but instead charts the relationship of Mary with Darnley and with her Lords. It is also of course an indictment of the misogyny of the times. In that respect Mary never stood a chance. She had flaws enough of her own even without that to contend with.

I note that at the back the description of the Darkland Tales project has Alan Warner’s then forthcoming contribution titled as The Man Who Would Not Be King. It was eventually published as Nothing Left to Fear From Hell.

Pedant’s corner:- “Here the change of seasons are dramatic” (the changes of seasons are,) “and snakes his arm right around her waist until his hand on her swollen belly” (is missing a verb after ‘hand’; rests? lies? settles? is?) “Lady Huntley” (Huntly, as it is always spelled elsewhere in the text.)

Paul Harris Publishing, 1982, 253 p, plus vi p Introduction by P H Butter. First published in 1932.

Edwin Muir is better known as a poet but he wrote three novels of which this is the third.

The plot centres round the conflict arising when Tom Manson finds out his brother Mansie has begun seeing Helen Wiliamson, a girl whom Tom had previously walked out with.

This causes tension within the family, the brothers stop speaking to each other and Tom starts drinking to excess.

For a book published in 1932 and set in 1911 there is a considerable emphasis on sexual matters. Of the imaginings of becoming intimate with a woman we are told, “Such secret pleasures are exciting, but they leave a sense of guilt towards the object that was employed to produce them. Tom was filled with shame that such thoughts should come into his mind when he was with Helen, and told himself he was a waster.”

There is stress too on the attractions of Socialism to those of Mansie’s persuasion and social standing, and of the similarity of its tenets to Christianity.

Tom has a bad fall under the influence of drink and thereafter suffers a series of headaches which increasingly incapacitate him. Both he and Mansie (but not the reader) are confused by the doctors they consult about Tom’s condition asking whether he has ever associated with loose women.

As the illness progresses reconciliation occurs and we are treated more to Mansie’s reflections on having an invalid in the house.

As a novel this is not entirely successful. As an insight into aspects of life in pre-Great War Glasgow (the Mansons had moved there from a farm some time before the novel begins) it is certainly better than Guy McCrone’s books about the extended Moorhouse family.

Pedant’s corner:- in the Introduction; superceded (superseded.) Otherwise; threatingly (threateningly,) Maisie (elsewhere always Mansie,) inimaginable (usually ‘unimaginable’,) excretary (excretory,) “he turned and literally flew downstairs” (not literally.)