March 15, 2024
Glaswegian coppers Jimmy Dreghorn and Archie McDaid return (after Edge of the Grave, 2023), this time following a string of murders into a cat-and-mouse game between IRA assassins and Her Majesty's Special Branch. During a welfare check, Dreghorn and McDaid (assisted by steadfast constable Ellen Duncan) discover a man shot dead, and their only lead is that the killers have Irish accents. Later, Dreghorn spots newcomers meeting with gangland royalty and forces an introduction to Irishman Conall Tracy's group. Tracy's claim that he's visiting relatives is plausible, given Glasgow's rising Irish population, but incongruities, including the rarity of shootings in Glasgow, Tracy's meeting with gang leadership, and a recent theft of explosives, stoke Dreghorn's suspicions. These concerns are validated when Special Branch anti-terrorism operatives warn the coppers off. But there's no chance of that after an explosion at a tenement linked to Tracy kills five children. Dreghorn and McDaid link more deaths to Tracy and then to a massacre following the 1916 Easter Uprising. But is Tracy actually a killer? Morrison's pitch-perfect conjuring of interwar Glasgow evokes a volatile mix of poverty, modernization, and sectarian strife, with charming-as-ever duo Dreghorn and McDaid humanizing justice. A must-read series for fans of Charles Todd's Ian Rutledge and Rennie Airth's John Madden tales.
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