No Less The Devil

By Stuart MacBride https://www.stuartmacbride.com/

Published by Bantam Press (an imprint of Penguin Random House) https://www.penguin.co.uk/

480 pages ISBN 9781787634909

Publication date 28 April 2022

I was allowed access to a pdf review copy on Net Galley.  Thanks to the author and publisher for organising this.

From the blurb

‘We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.’

Synopsis

Operation Maypole has stalled. It is seventeen months since the serial killer ‘The Bloodsmith’ first struck and the police are getting nowhere. The press is brewing up a media storm and the ‘High Heidyins’ at police HQ desperately want a result. It’s the sort of case that can make a career, but more likely it seems, sink one without trace. The case is passed to DCI Ross to handle, and he foists it on to DI Tudor.

Tudor is relying on his team to get the required result and DS Lucy McVeigh and DC Duncan (Dunk) Fraser keep getting the short straw.

Lucy has problems of her own and when the recently released killer Benedict Strachan appears begging for her help they multiply rapidly. When Benedict was eleven, he and an accomplice stabbed to death a homeless man in a dark side street one night. Benedict was caught and convicted but never revealed the identity of the other child with him and now released from prison is convinced ‘they’ are out to get him. Is he just paranoid or are there really two monstrous killers out there?

Lucy and Dunk’s search takes the from the dangerous streets of Kingsmeath to a version of Hogwarts for the children of the rich and influential.

My thoughts

Back to fictional Oldcastle but this time not an Ash Henderson novel. Here we have new characters in the form of DS Lucy McVeigh and DC Duncan (Dunk) Fraser to keep us entertained and they certainly do that!

It treads familiar ground for regular MacBride novels in that the main character is a troubled cop (think Logan Macrae) who is saddled with a slightly barnpot side kick (think Tufty or Alice). Lucy’s problems stem from a girl’s night out and an apparent White Knight being nothing of the sort. The ordeal of Lucy and her friend are particularly harrowing, with no punches being pulled by the author. Strong stuff indeed but not gratuitous. This seems to explain Lucy’s erratic behaviour and motivations but of course there is always a little something extra added to the mix. The ‘Dunk’ provides plenty of light relief him being unfit and a short arse with a propensity to dress like a 1960s beat poet. The butt of some jokes but no fool, more the Ying to Lucy’s Yang.

As with most of his work it is the author’s ability in mixing dark and light is what impresses. He can convincingly describe the grotty side of life in Scotland’s housing schemes and some the lowlife that add to this misery. The murders are gory and gruesome and sometimes quite inventive. These are always unflinchingly described making the novels not for the highly sensitive.

Then just when everything seems to be bleak and desolate, he resorts to humour which unerringly hits the spot. As usual there is plenty of dark, gallows type humour but also moments of the daft, strange, or surreal. Fancy including a barman known as ‘Hedgehog Dundee’ but not elaborating on it or having Lucy resorting to using her late father’s pink Bedford Rascal van complete with dancing sausages logo which everyone describes as copulating. I’m a fan and find it inspired stuff though not for everyone’s taste, I guess.

The dialogue is the usual mixture of snappy one-liners mixed with his trademark stream of consciousness ramblings in the background. At the flat of the third victim the new renter is unaware of the murder that happened in his bathroom, so whilst Lucy and Dunk are investigating, he is on the phone in the background ranting to his wife about the estate agent. Also, there are the interruptions of the cheesy local radio every time they are in the car. I can’t work out if this is out of love or hate for that form of the media, but it adds extra layer to the overall feel.

There are several damaged characters in the novel who are sympathetically handled, though one is considerably darker than the rest.  

As you are reading its progresses as you might expect a typical Stuart MacBride book to, perhaps a little formulaic for some but packed with just what his readers have come to expect. Then at 75% through it starts to get a little bit strange. At 80% in the author borrows Spinal Tap’s guitarist Nigel Tufnel’s amp and turns it up to eleven (“It’s one louder, isn’t it?”) and it gets totally insane. It would be difficult to explain without a spoiler but certainly everything is suddenly turned on its head. I expect this will divide opinion, but I loved it. It’s not often you can read a book by an established novelist whose work you are familiar with and think I never saw that coming.

A crime novel packed with light and dark, brutality and laugh out loud humour, peaking with a totally unexpected twist. Fingers crossed for a follow up!

The author

Stuart MacBride is the Sunday Times No.1 bestselling author of the Logan McRae and Ash Henderson novels. He’s also published standalones, novellas, and short stories, as well as a slightly twisted children’s picture book for slightly twisted children. Stuart lives in the northeast of Scotland with his wife Fiona, cats Gherkin, Onion and Beetroot, some hens, some horses, and an impressive collection of assorted weeds. 

No Less The Devil can be purchased direct from the author here