BOOK OF THE WEEK

The Heretic by Liam McIlvanney; Harper Collins; £14.99

In 1969, he was a hero for solving the case of a notorious Glasgow serial killer – The Quaker.

On his return, in 1975 after serving with the London Metropolitan Police, DI Duncan McCormack finds himself despised by his superior and

many colleagues for his earlier perceived betrayal of a corrupt senior officer as part of that earlier case. Although now working to collect enough evidence to arrest and convict a major gangster, Walter Maitland, he is spitefully assigned to investigate the horrific murder of an unknown man.

Ignoring his instructions to leave it alone, McCormack continues to look into the fire in which four people, including a mother and child, died.

He believes this was set at Maitland’s behest, since it targeted a rival gang’s warehouse in the first instance. When one of Maitland’s pubs is bombed, suspicion falls on Irish terrorists but McCormack is not convinced. As the investigation into Maitland’s criminal dealings, especially prostitution, progresses in parallel with the murder inquiry, the separate threads are drawn together in a complex pattern, and a final resolution.

Glasgow in the 1970s was changing. Industry was rapidly declining. Areas of the city’s housing were condemned but still inhabited and the high-rise flats that would in turn become the new slums were being

built. The M8 motorway had split the centre of the city. Criminal gangs were merging into organised crime – big business. Sectarian bigotry was rife.

The Irish Troubles were overflowing into mainland Britain, and while Scotland escaped most of that, the fear of terrorism was significant. The police, while not as brutal as earlier, were still largely unregulated

and many saw themselves as above the law. Add to that in 1975 an extended strike in Glasgow by dust cart drivers, and you have the environment in which this book is set.

Liam McIlvanney’s narrative reflects all of that and pulls no punches – the language influenced by the times. I found the book eminently readable, if slightly on the long side; the characters starkly drawn and the issues of the day discussed quite frankly within the framework of the ongoing plots.

This is the second of Liam McIlvanney’s books featuring DI McCormack. The first was The Quaker, and there are references to it throughout, so reading that first would be advisable but not at all necessary to enjoy this novel.