The Sudden Arrival of Violence

Malcolm Mackay
The Sudden Arrival of Violence

Mantle, 2014

The final part of The Glasgow Trilogy. Former freelance hitman Calum MacLean is now forced to leave his independence. He becomes the main gunman for the criminal organization headed by Peter Jamieson. Calum is not satisfied with the situation, but he can not just stand and get away from his employer. In the criminal business there are special rules and fot hitmen it sounds something like this - death in, death out. Calum can leave the organization only in the casket, though it will not exactly be true: the body of former hitman likely will never be found.

However, MacLean invents his plan of runaway from the organization. After the final hit and killing two persons, the driver for the organization boss and a crooked accountant for a rival gang boss, Calum lays low, knowing that within a week after the job he will not be looked. Calum in minimum time must collect his things, sell his car, and most importantly, buy a fake passport to flee abroad. But Calum’s plan fails.

The Sudden Arrival of Violence’s story has parallels with other hitman novel, The Butcher's Boy. Only Mackay’s gunman is trying to get away from the organization by his own will, Thomas Perry’s unnamed hitman is forced into hiding after the attacks on him by the mafia bosses. Mackay does not stands with one character for long, alternating points of view. Here the widow of the killed driver tries to solve her husband 's disappearance, and persistent detective is entangled in suspects and motives, and Calum’s brother worries for the successful realization of a plan of escape. The novel offers a considerable amount of twists, not letting you feel bored in nearly 400 pages.

This novel closes the trilogy, it is the longest of the three, here the storylines weave most. For all the complexity of the whole picture Mackay offers not so much action. The novel offers Calum’s story how he actually became a gun for sale. And I can not say that McKay gives us a compelling biography.

I can not avoid SPOILERS when discussing another plot turn, used by the author. Mackay seems to violate an unwritten rule, bringing together Calum and Detective Fisher. Calum in a private conversation with Detective confesses to all their murders and talks about the internal works of the criminal organization. It is no secret that the hitmen have cooperated with the police and will be cooperating exchanging their testimony to freedom. There is another type of criminals who flirted with investigators, but never directly admitted to their own crimes. Nevertheless Calum gives his confession, but remains at large. This episode of the meeting of Calum and Fisher rings false. Fisher would hardly leave Calum free. And all Calum’s confessions are not worth a damn.

Mackay in the finale gives his (anti)hero a chance at rehabilitation. Calum plans to live a life on this side of the law, quitinng the contract murders. But this kind of happy ending can be considered as pessimistic ending. Calum, a man without education and no skills, is unlikely to find himself in a free life. Where he will yield and what benefits he can bring to society? Become a seller in the supermarket? Become a sales manager of plastic windows or vacuum cleaners? I think a law-abiding life will be worst punishment for the former killer.

A particular problem of this novel - and in general of the whole trilogy - became the style chosen by the author. In its best moments it is a chopped-up prose, partly energetic, partly melodic. In their worst moments (which there are plenty) it is a set of truisms, half-baked sentences, uttering platitudes.

«Life moved on, but it left a scar. Takes real strength to shrug it off and move straight along.»

«Gumen, for example. For them it could be a matter of life or death. Capture or escape.»

«Tough, surly, but definetely honest. Everyone said so. Got a hard-on for gangland stuff. Just because people think he's honest, doesn't mean he is.»

Sometimes it seems that the author passed the rough drafts of novels to the publisher, not the novels themselves.

The whole trilogy is pretty good read, where the best of the three is perhaps the second novel. The Glasgow Trilogy is worth reading, but you wouldn’t kill for it.

Gone Again

Doug Johnstone
Gone Again

Faber, 2013

Photographer of an Edinburgh newspaper Mark Douglas photographs whales on the beach in the coastal waters, when he gets a call from a teacher from his son Nathan’s school who says that Mark's wife, Lauren, hasn't turned up to collect their son. Mark takes his son home and tries ring his wife on her mobile phone. Her number is not available.

Mark has no idea where his wife could go, she had no friends, work is long over, the phone number is unavailable. Lauren also is pregnant. Mark rings to his friends, but no one has any idea where Lauren can be. Mark turns on his wife's laptop, checks her accounts in social networks, desktop - nothing.

Mark worries that Lauren may have a relapse. Six years ago, when Lauren after a difficult birth barely survived, she had disappeared for ten days. Mark was confused and did not know what to do. He was left alone to nurse the baby, wondering when his wife would return. Ten days later, she’d returned, but did not say where she was all this time, and Mark did not ask, fearing that it could adversely affect the wife.

After brilliant Smokeheads and disastrous Hit & Run we could expect anything from Doug Johnstone. Gone Again has turned out much better than Hit & Run, although not as good as Smokeheads.

Johnstone’s head is clogged with interesting ideas, but he did not always successfully implement them, not revealing his potential by 100 percent. Here, the first half of the book is brilliant. The author from the outset throws a hook, and it is impossible not to get caught at it. The book grabes you from the first pages, and gradually Johnstone begins to return to the past, giving the background on the characters, the history of the relationship between husband and wife, and that includes the secrets of the past. The book is written in the third person, and we can clearly hear Mark’s voice. He's a little short-tempered, but a caring family man, a loving husband, he seems to be a positive character, but by the middle of the novel Johnstone makes us to think otherwise. In the middle noir intonations start to sink through: there is a possibility that Mark is an unreliable narrator, and his mistakes play against him. And now Mark from the victim turns into a controversial character, even shady. Johnstone little by little raises tension.

In the second half the book loses its suspense, and the novel is slipping into a more or less linear thriller. There are coincidences like that Mark holds a gun at home (for what in Scotland you can get a real five-year prison term), and even when Lauren was depressed, he did not get rid of a gun. The transformation of Mark from a broken hearted photographer with emotional problems into an action hero, shooting with a gun at the villains and torturing people, look too unnatural. Yes, you can believe that Mark is short-tempered and sometimes loses control of himself, but I do not believe that he would use a few tricks from the arsenal of the professional thief Parker from Richard Stark’s novels. It is one thing to break a woman's nose, and another to breaking into homes, waving a gun, shooting people’s hands.

However, it's a quick read that can entertain and deliver a certain amount of pleasure. I just wish that the author worked on the characters better.

The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter

Malcolm Mackay
The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter

Pan Macmillan, 2013

Calum MacLean is a freelancer hitman. He kills people for money, loves his job, but he tries not to work much. There is enough money, that you don’t know where to spend, and to attract attention is not necessary. Calum takes the order, makes a hit, lays low. He works for himself and not for the organization, and he himself makes his schedule.

When a permanent hitman for one of crime syndicates of Glasgow replaces his hip, he must be replaced immediately by someone. This substitution becomes Calum. He is hired to kill the small time dealer Lewis Winter. He is planning to make a move against the organization and now heneeds to be removed, and quickly. Calum does not ask too many questions, takes an order, watch the victim for a few days and makes the hit.

In the entire history of literature writers not too often made figure of assassin a protagonist, but if they did, it usually turned out well (it is not so for TV). Nobody outtopped Thomas Perry with his The Butcher's Boy (government assasins is a separate sub-genre). Nor did Malcolm Mackay and his decent debut.

The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter grabs you not with twists and tickling of the nerves, but with the description of everyday life of a talented young killer. Chapter by chapter we deeps into the routine: how order is received, how the victim is being followed, how to select the killing method, how to buy a weapon, how to proceed after the hit. Mackay, like his protagonist, never missteps. Chronicle of life of a hitman turned out pretty convincing (as far as we, not related to the criminal world, can judge). The author does not misstep, does not allow children's errors, and it can even be assumed that Mackay spent some time in the company of a hitman.

The book presents no surprises, and the constant change of point of view slows the novel. In one sentence the author may be in the mind of one character and in the next in somebody’s else. It's only evidence of inexperience.

Second person narration also can not be explained. What did the author wanted to accomplished with these calls to his characters? Because of the second person the overall effect is reduced: in the book it’s not like real people live and act, but dolls, which Mackay talks to.

The novel is preceeded by the character list, with brief descriptions. Does the author so underestimate the reader believing that he, poor sod, will get lost in broad daylight? There is a limited number of characters her , and to get lost in them is not easy.

Good debut, with tasty detailes, but without a drive.

my son, my son

Douglas Galbraith
my son, my son: how one generation hurts the next

Harvill Secker, 2012

Before us a memoir of forty-something-year-old Scottish writer Douglas Galbraith, father of two children, who once returned home from a trip out of London, where the writer was doing research for his next novel, and found that his wife, a Japanese-born, stole two their sons and they had gone to his home in Japan, leaving no information.

Galbraith wrote his memoirs five years after the event - a little drama, as he calls it. Over these five years, the writer has never seen his sons. At the time of the abduction Satomi, the eldest son, was six years old, and the youngest, Makoto, was four. Brought up in a multicultural family, children initially could equally speak the father tongue, English, and the mother tongue, Japanese. Mother gradually began to dominate in the family, and the children became less and less using English. Strangely enough, but the author did not immediately reveals the chronology of abduction, the chronology of events prior to the abduction, when gradually became clear that Tomoko, the writer's wife, and he could not live together.

Galbraith monitors how the children gradually became the prerogative of women, not men, and how the child is still something of a property of his parents, not a full human being. However the law changes, no matter what the international covenants to protect children and their rights were not concluded, children will still remain dependent on adults, not fully independent. They can not choose for themselves, they can not vote, even though many of the children are more conscious than adults.

«My son, my son» is thepiercing memoirs of enormous power. In today's world, where everything seems to be focused on the safety and protection of a person and a child in particular, children will still remain dependent on adults, and sometimes even a toy in the hands of parents. Feelings and desires of the adult can go counter to the wishes of a child, can be harmful to a child, but no one asks a child. So one generation can destroy the life of another, even without considering the consequences.