The other day I reviewed a book by William MacIlvanney, considered a founder of the Scottish “Tartan Noir” school of detective fiction. I disagreed with some of the attitudes he expressed, but was highly impressed with his writing. Now I’ve read a book by one of MacIlvanney’s successors, J. M. Dalgliesh – A Long Time Dead. The writing was good in general (though a misplaced modifier sneaked past the editors), but the world view here was even less to my taste.

Duncan McAdam grew up on the Isle of Skye, but fled family tensions as soon as he could. Now he’s a police detective in Glasgow, but he’s unpopular both with his colleagues and his bosses. When they get a call that a young woman’s body has been found on Skye, buried and preserved in peat, they send Duncan off to investigate. He has no wish to go – his mother has dementia and is confined to a home there, and he doesn’t get along well with his sister. But go he must.

The dead girl has been easily identified – she is Isla Matheson, who vanished about twenty years ago and was assumed to have been a runaway. Her body shows no sign of violence. And she seems to have been a popular girl – no motive for her murder is apparent. Duncan’s investigation will delve deeply into the dark side of island life, uncovering secrets  that, like the body, have been long concealed.

J. M. Dalgliesh is a good writer. He paints his characters well and crafts effective dialogue. I quite enjoyed reading A Long Time Dead – right up until the solution appeared.

Discussing that solution involves dropping a spoiler into this review – I’ll try to conceal it, but it won’t be hard to guess. The murderer’s identity and the motive hinge, as in so many modern stories, on the guilt of the one subculture in our society that it’s still OK to stigmatize. Crazy nonconformists who haven’t evolved with the times, who don’t even merit sympathy. Know what I mean?

Anyway, A Long Time Dead was a pretty good mystery, but I’m done with J. M. Dalgliesh.