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Laidlaw
Crime and punishment in Glasgow with Detective Inspector Laidlaw breaking the rules to find the murderer
A young woman, Jennifer Lawson has been found brutally murdered. She has been strangled and then sexually assaulted. Her body has been dumped in Kelvingrove Park in the western part of Glasgow. The author also tells the reader who the killer is and hints at a motive for the killing.
It remains for Detective Inspector to find the killer from a confusing set of clues he gleams from the victim’s family and relatives and their friends. Laidlaw is not a conventional cop of the Glasgow police force. Indeed, he draws clear parallels between himself and his associates.
Of one named Milligan, Laidlaw makes the following observation. "I think false certainties are what destroy us. And Milligan’s full of them. He’s a walking absolute. What’s murder but a willed absolute, an invented certainty? An existential failure of nerve. What we shouldn’t do is compound the felony in our reaction to it. And that’s what people keep doing. Faced with the enormity, they lose their nerve, and where they should see a man, they make a monster. It’s a social industry. And Milligan’s one of its entrepreneurs."
What keeps emerging from this book is the intricate understanding the author McIlvanney imparts about the characters that populate this book. In this next passage, Laidlaw and his assistant Detective Constable Harkness are questioning Mr. and Mrs. Stanley, friends of the murder victim and her family. Laidlaw discerned the tension between husband and wife, the former reluctant to come forward with information, the latter determined to do so.
The Stanley’s stared across at each other. "Laidlaw and Harkness sat silent. It wasn’t the kind of look to interfere in. That stare was about twenty years of marriage and it was carrying more complicated traffic between them than the M1 (motorway). It was no longer about a dead girl or policemen’s questions. It was about other kinds of death. It was about how much a woman had never got out of a relationship and the decency she had maintained in spite of it. It was about how much a man had hidden from promises he perhaps didn’t even know he had made. It was about pride kept and pride lost."
This book is also about Glasgow, the other city in Scotland that has always lived in the shadow of its far more cosmopolitan sister Edinburgh (pronounced "Ed-in-borough"). Glasgow was the unruly, snotty-nosed sibling that was always dirty, while its sister always managed to appear spotless and polite. Laidlaw and Harkness are at the Glasgow Cross, where a number of roads converge: Gallowgate, Trongate, High Street, and the London Road. They are "on the site of the old Tolbooth—a kind of midget tower with a Balustrade at the top and above that the figure of a unicorn."
"Harkness read the words carved on the stone: ‘Nemo me impune lacessit…’
"No one assails me with impunity," Laidlaw said. "wha daur meddle wi me?…I like the civic honesty of that," Laidlaw was smiling. "That’s the wee message carved on the heart of Glasgow. Visitors are advised not to be cheeky."
The book is also filled with the Glasgow the "patter." Laidlaw and Harkness are waiting in the canteen of a print shop to interview a witness when a worker comes in to have a cigarette. After some banter with Laidlaw and Harkness, he tells them a story about the walk-in cupboard near where they are all standing.
"This is gospel. No’ last week, but the week before. Big Aly Simpson. Bloke in the work. He’s fond o’ his nookie an’ that, ye know? Me. Ah’d rather hiv a fish-supper. Anyway, there’s nane o’ us perfect. Dinner-time (lunch time). The horn goes. Back tae the galleys. Except Big Aly an Jinty. Jinty’s a big lassie that works wan o’ the machines. Well, she’s no’ that big, but everybody’s big tae me. Ah yince broke ma leg fa’lling aff the kerb. But she’s gemme. So the two o’ them wait in the canteen here an’ lock the door. Jist gettin’doon tae it. When they hear somebody tryin’ the door. Then there’s the voices talkin’ about gettin’ the key. Panic stations. Big Aly’s a mairrit man. Likes tae think that everybody else’s heid buttons up the back. So he hides in the press there. Jinty sorts herself an’ sterts yawnin’ an’ that. Goes tae the door an’ opens it. ‘Ah must’ve fell asleep,’ she says, blinkin’ like Snow White. Well, Wullie Anderson comes in. Whaur dae ye think is the first place he makes fur? The press there. Tae get a new brush-heid. Opens the dorr. There’s Big Aly. Standin; like Count Dracula. Ye widny credit it. Know whit Big Aly says? Cool as ye like. "Is this where ye get the bus for Maryhill.’ An’ that’s the truth."
If you’re fond of book about detectives who are complex and analytical, and caught up in the underworld they confront everyday, Laidlaw if meant for you. The main character Laidlaw is at odds with the police force he serves and is torn between a family and his work and too often the murderers and their victims take priority over wife and children.
William McIlvanney is one of Scotland’s best known writers. He is winner of the Whitbread Award for Fiction. The award is chosen by the Booksellers Association of Great Britain and Ireland, with funds provided by Whitbread Breweries.
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