Irvine Welsh

Edinburgh copper Ray Lennox last appeared a couple of years ago in The Long Knives. Now, he has quit the force and, given his predilections, is in a strange place on what might be thought foreign soil – England’s south coast, a partner in a security firm based in Horsham, with his customer base ranging from the gay green madness of Brighton, to the villas of Eastbourne, where the silence is only punctuated by the quiet hum of wheelchair tyres and the creak of zimmer frames.

His business partner is George Marsden, in some ways the antithesis of Lennox, in that he is English public school, suave, urbane, and speaks the esoteric language of the English middle classes. He is no man’s dupe, however, as we are given hints that he once served with the Special Boat Service.

Lennox is deeply in lust with a local chemistry lecturer, Carmel Devereux, some years his junior, and it is at a meet and greet party with potential wealthy sponsors of her research, that he is staggered to see the face of Mathew Cardingworth, a character from wounding nightmares. In an Edinburgh underpass, all those years ago, Cardingworth was one of a gang that captured Lennox and his teenage mate Les Brodie, and subjected them to grim sexual and physical abuse.

Fantasising about getting even with Cardingworth, Lennox actually meets him socially and then makes the error of accepting Cardingworth’s offer of a couple of tickets for the executive box at Brighton’s next Premiership home game against Liverpool. An even worse mistake is inviting Les Brodie down from Scotland, standing him the air fare as a treat. Whereas Lennox’s vengeance against his abuser have stayed firmly inside his head, Les Brodie is more volatile. He catches sight of Cardingworth as they drink their pints and graze at the buffet; it only takes seconds for Brodie to recognise his abuser, and he is just as quick to smash his glass on the bar counter and thrust it into Cardingworth’a face.

As his obsession with Cardingworth deepens, Lennox discovers that there is a tenuous – but intriguing link between the businessman and several youngsters who disappeared from the ‘care’ of Sussex Children’s Services. The fact that all local and national newspaper references to those years – print, microfiche and digital – have all disappeared. In another puzzle, at least for the reader, one of the non-Brighton, non-now narratives in the book is in the voice of an Englishman, perhaps a merchant seaman, who has killed a man in a Shanghai bar fight and been incarcerated sine die in a vile Chinese prison. He is clearly a deeply damaged and dangerous man, and he appears to be directing his story at Lennox, but who is he?

Lennox, as he peels back the layers of the recent past, all too late realises he is in way over his head, but with almost suicidal and terrier-like tenacity, he presses on regardless, perhaps echoing the thoughts of his famous fictional countryman, who mused:

“I am in blood
Stepped in so far, that, should I wade no more,
Returning were as tedious as go o’er”

Fans of Welsh will love this, and feel at home with how the story darts back and forth between various characters, the Scottish conversational vernacular, the violence, the sex – and the grim humour. There is one wonderful example of the latter when contractors installing a new security system in a retirement home fall foul of a particularly demented resident, and all hell breaks loose. The titular resolution does not happen until the final pages of the book and it occurs, ironically, in the same care home where the contractors came so comically to grief. The violence is gloriously excessive, and none of it – despite the cover image – involves anything so clean and crisp as a handgun. You can take your pick from acid attacks, being dismembered by a sabre, facial surgery via a beer glass, poisoned wine, inhalation of liquid concrete and being hurled through a a high window. Resolution is published by Jonathan Cape and will be out on 11th July.

Irvine Welsh introduced us to Edinburgh detective Ray Lennox in Crime, but it has taken fourteen years for the second in the series – The Long Knives – to emerge. The title is not a metaphor, as the opening chapter describes the castration of a rather unpleasant Conservative MP in an empty warehouse in Leith.

There is no shortage of people who might have wanted Ritchie Gulliver dead. They range from political opponents, via victims of his predatory sexual habits, to activist groups he has offended. Lennox is given the case, and is immediately alerted to a recent incident in London which sounds similar. Home Office civil servant Christopher Piggott-Wilkins has been attacked in the Savoy Hotel. He managed to escape, badly wounded, and immediately transferred himself to a Harley Street hospital, after which what occurred in his suite has been cleaned up, both literally and metaphorically, by un-named but powerful agencies. Piggott-Wilkins has been left with one testicle, while Gulliver’s complete ‘package’ was discovered, draped from the Sir Walter Scott memorial, by an unsuspecting tourist.

After a lighting trip to London to speak to Mark Hollis, the larger-than-life Met copper investigating the Savoy case, Lennox returns to Edinburgh to face a sea of troubles. His fiancee Trudi not only seems to be ignoring his calls, but may have another love in her life. A former colleague, Jim McVittie, has transitioned to female, but has been found horrifically beaten up and is not expected to survive. Before the assault, Lennox meets one of the more ‘in your face’ transexuals in the local scene:

“What appears to be a brawny young man of around six foot four in a blue dress not so much enters as bulldozes in, a charged storm of bristling rage. He has a big hooked nose, and long flowing brown hair, which seems to have been given the attention of crimping tongs fashionable in the eighties. On his face a long scar bubbles thickly from under a trowelling of foundation.”

An investigative journalist has tipped Lennox off that the two cases may be linked to a serious sexual assault at a ski resort some years earlier, and that high class prostitutes – and the men who run them – may be involved.

Readers familiar with Welsh’s style over the years will recognise his trademarks, including the unpunctuated rapid-fire dialogue, the demi-monde of drugs, violence, sex and alcohol, and the underpinning ground-bass that tells us it’s an us-and-them world. There is even a passing reference to the most infamous of the author’s creations, Francis Begbie.

One of the more memorable characters in the drama is the brilliantly over-the-top Mark Hollis. He is more redolent of the glory days of The Sweeney than the current fashion of dancing the Macarena at Gay Pride marches. Hollis provides valuable information to Lennox, and slowly but surely the Edinburgh cop connects the pieces of the jigsaw. The picture that emerges is a chilling one. The killings are the work of a partnership. The man is linked to an act of random cruelty some years previously in Tehran, while his female partner is, indeed, seeking revenge for her abuse in a ski-lift gondola, but when her identity is revealed, Lennox is beyond shocked.

Welsh brings us horrific violence, but also the dark poetry of compassion. I can only liken Ray Lennox’s desire to avenge the murder victims whose suffering is imprinted on his soul, to Derek Raymond’s nameless Sergeant in books like I Was Dora Suarez. This is a magnificent work of fiction, not just a good crime novel. It is published by Jonathan Cape and will be out on 25th August.