It should feel quite normal to pick up a detective novel and note without comment that the protagonist is a poof. Yet it doesn’t. Even after all these years.
So it was refreshing to read this book in Dickson’s series about Jas Anderson, a private eye in Glasgow (complete with Glaswegian dialect and vowels, but Sassenachs and others will soon get used to those). I found myself wishing I had read the ones that came before it, but Dickson takes us (almost) seamlessly through this story, making references to past events without our having had to read the books to find out what he’s talking about.
It’s not the fastest-starting story I’ve read in the thriller brigade, but characterisation keeps up the interest, as Jas and his newly installed live-in lover Stevie knuckle down to domestic bliss – but not all of it is so. Jas meets Galbraith, a cop from Yorkshire who’s up in Scotland investigating possible corruption in the Strathclyde force. Straight as a prize stud bull, but desirable in a pipe-smoking, sports-jacket-sporting kind of way, and Jas still has the hots for him, having met him some years ago at a conference. Oh, and his teenage son is gay, adding more personal interest as well as plot intrigue.
Once the story does get going you’re hooked, as Jas and Galbraith investigate members of the force Jas used to work for before he left under a cloud – and dig out things certain people would prefer left covered up.
It’s a standard storyline (but someone somewhere once said there are only seven standard storylines, and the rest are all variations on a theme). However, as with any story, it’s the way you tell them.
I look forward to meeting Mr Anderson again. Accent an’ all.