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Oct 11, 20211 min read
904. Douglas Stuart - Shuggie Bain
I thought this was brilliant and well-deserving of the Booker prize it won in 2020. A very grim novel set in Glasgow in the 1980s. The...
Oct 7, 20211 min read
903. William McIlvanney & Ian Rankin - The Dark Remains
The first Laidlaw novel, completed by Rankin following McIvanney’s death in 2015. I found it very hard work and with few characters of...
Nov 28, 20201 min read
830. Denise Mina - The Less Dead
I like Denise Mina, with her weird punk hair, and enjoyed her on the TV recently with Frank Skinner on Boswell & Johnson’s tour of...
May 16, 20191 min read
683. William McIlvanney - Strange Loyalties
A book whose provenance I don’t know; must have been my father’s if the marginal jottings are in his handwriting. Not unlike a Rebus...
Apr 17, 20141 min read
200. Peter May - The Blackhouse
This is the first of the Lewis trilogy, no.199 above being the third. Again very good, the same central character (Finn) is not yet an...
Aug 19, 20131 min read
137. Denise Mina - Exile
The follow-up to 'Garnethill', which I must have enjoyed more than no.134 above indicates. The plot is less personal to Maureen this time...