A Death in Glasgow by Eva Macrae review: 'plenty of suspects'
The red herrings swim in a shoal in this Glasgow-set crime novel, writes David Robinson
Newspaper photographers tend to see a far wider slice of life than most, and Lynne McEwan’s 25 years as one for her first career will have given her plenty to draw on for her second as a crime novelist. Already she has written six police procedurals set on the Solway Firth - two published last year alone - but this one, with a new publisher, new lead character and written under a pen-name of Eva Macrae, takes her back to her native Glasgow.
May MacKay is a middle-aged mother hen police sergeant at Cathcart police station, and although she “has the height and heft of her Highland ancestors” she is sensitive enough too, taking off her protective gear before meeting the mother of a young woman who committed suicide the previous night. The reader already knows that this was no suicide. As an empty train came into a darkened Platform Nine at Glasgow Central, Holly Campbell was most definitely pushed in front of it.
One of the first things they teach you about writing crime fiction is that it really helps if the investigating cop has some personal motivation to pursue the case, and so it is here: May’s own daughter committed suicide too. So she wants to help Holly’s mother, Jackie, and takes her seriously when she insists that Holly had everything to live for, and that she was living in fear of a violent ex-boyfriend, who has probably killed her. Finding a return rail ticket in Holly’s personal effects confirms May's suspicions. Maybe it was murder after all.
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Of course, her boss - fast-tracked, no experience (aren’t they always?) - doesn’t believe this. But the reader isn’t quite on board either. Because by the time we meet the violent ex-boyfriend, who has not only been seen hitting Holly in public but is a locally well-known and feared drug dealer, there are at least 250 pages still to go. Either it’s going to be a very slow story indeed or someone else has to be involved.
Fortunately, Jackie Campbell can provide us with plenty of suspects. There’s her brother, for one: he seems to be Govanhill’s godfather. Or her nephew, who was in the same gang as the violent ex-boyfriend. Or her partner, an ex-cop who doesn’t quite seem to fit in. Or - to widen the net - Holly’s friends at college. Could all this be a simple case of love rivalry?
There’s even more to the plot than this, as 40 pages in we suddenly learn (I suspect an added paragraph in one of the later edits to boost the body count) that May’s erstwhile partner had been found floating in the Clyde with two bullets in his skull - though he doesn’t, as it were, resurface apart from in a couple of half-hearted mentions further along. By then though, the reader - this reader anyway - is feeling slapped around by so many different possibilities as to begin to lose interest in the main case, as can often happen when red herrings swim in a shoal.
This is a pity because May Mackay is an eminently likeable character, stern where she needs to be but always aware that a moment’s kindness can change a life, occasionally acting according to that principle rather than the strict letter of the law. Kindness seems to pay off for her: a friendly chat with the station cleaner helps her come up with a good idea and buying a meal for a tramp with “eyes the deep blue of the winter sky above Glasgow” (really?) helps in the denouement.
This is not to say that the letter of the law is altogether ignored: indeed, had it not been for May’s determination to pursue Holly’s case, her jumped-up inspector would have happily handed it over to the British Transport Police. May’s workaround to prevent this involves collaborating with a diminutive Indian-Scottish BTP officer. This is a potentially interesting pairing, and if May is ever to return to patrolling the Southside of fictional Glasgow, I’d like to see her making more of it.
A Death in Glasgow, by Eva Macrae, Century, £16.99
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