I have to be honest and say that I can’t remember how I found Malcolm Mackay’s Glasgow Trilogy of ‘The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter’, ‘How a Gunman Says Goodbye’ and ‘The Sudden Arrival of Violence’, as well as another three novels, all set in the same nasty environment of gangland Glasgow, The Night the Rich Men Burned’, ‘Every Night I Dream of Hell’ and ‘For Those Who Know the Ending’ although it may have been an interview or a book review in the press. I really enjoyed his books but I think the content could be a bit too tricky for some readers. There are other novels of Mackay’s which I have read but I am going to focus on these six for the time being.
Malcolm Mackay is around 40 and he was born in Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis which is in the Hebridean islands off the north-west coast of Scotland. I don’t know very much about him other than his novels but it is interesting that he should have acquired so much knowledge of gangland Glasgow! In saying that. It is worth mentioning that, although I think the books fit quite well into the general genre which is covered in the blog, they are not really ‘detective’ novels as such but simply crime (and pretty heavy crime) fiction. However, in my view, if you like the general theme of the books covered in the blog, there is a good chance you will like these. I must admit that, after the first one, I gobbled the rest up pretty quickly!
The basic theme of the Glasgow Trilogy is that the principal character, a very likeable young guy called Calum is actually a hired assassin and, as a result, a pretty nasty piece of stuff! Despite this, as I say, you find yourself warming to him and the books relate his activities working for Glasgow gangsters. In the subsequent books, which don’t involve Calum, we do have a Glasgow police officer as the principal character so these are more in line with our detective genre. The same criminals also keep turning up and the story-writing is very good and certainly to be recommended although, strangely, they all seem to come from Mackay’s imagination with very little knowledge of or research into the environment which he writes about. That seems pretty clever to me and I certainly found it difficult to put any of the books down. However, I can understand that McKay’s books might just be a bit too ‘noir’ for everyone’s taste and it might be useful to find out a bit of background before embarking on a purchase! I f you want to find out a bit more, you could try going to the place where I found out about Malcolm Mackay and that was in an interview which appeared in the Scottish press a few years ago when the author was just surfacing. You will find it at Interview with Malcolm Mackay and, as I say, it’s worth a quick read before embarking on the books.