Tag Archives: Logan McRae

Fiction, Reviews

‘All That’s Dead,’ by Stuart MacBride

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I did it again. I wasn’t going to read any more Stuart MacBride novels, but I keep getting them confused with other Scottish mystery series. So I buy them again, and they’re not so awful that I feel the need to dump them, and once again I’m slogging through the adventures of Inspector Logan McRae and his crew of dysfunctional, profane detectives, all of whom hate each other.

In All That’s Dead, Logan is just back to work after a long medical leave resulting from being stabbed. He’s told his first case will be an easy one. That, of course, turns out to be utterly, hideously wrong.

A well-known professor, a vociferous opponent of Scottish independence, has disappeared. We soon learn (though it takes the police longer) that the man’s been kidnapped by an insane Scottish nationalist, with a plan to promote his cause by kidnapping opponents, snipping off body parts, and sending those parts to the press.

This will get very ugly, and all the way through we do a ride-along with the Scottish police who (judging by these books) are a bunch of functional morons who excel only at hurling authentic Scottish insults at each other. Chief among them is raddled lesbian Detective Steel, whose dirty talk is stomach-turning in itself.

The story itself isn’t bad, though it’s gruesome. A lot of people seem to like the series, so maybe you will too, if this is your cup of tea. Cautions for foul language, disgusting crimes, and exceedingly unpleasant characters.

Somebody remind me, next time a Logan McRae book comes out, not to buy it.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Blood Road, by Stuart MacBride

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The Blood Road

Hardie rubbed at his face. ‘We’ve got two missing girls; an ex-police-officer who was stabbed to death; an exhumed murder victim no one can identify, a serving police officer who’s been hanged, and now you say the body you dug up in the middle of nowhere wasn’t just murdered, it was tortured first!’ He pressed his palms into his eye sockets and made a muffled screaming noise.

It is my plan not to read any more of Stuart MacBride’s Logan McRae novels. I bought this one by accident, as I explained a few reviews ago. But it’s not because they’re bad novels. They’re well-written and exciting, with moments of excellent, witty prose. I just don’t like the world they take me into.

In The Blood Road, our hero, Detective Inspector Logan McRae, has made a move to the Professional Standards police squad in his part of Scotland. His former boss is now his subordinate. Other cops don’t like him much because of his job, but short-handedness means he gets pulled into a murder investigation anyway.

A body is found stabbed to death in a car along a lonely road. When it’s identified, it’s a shock – it’s a former police colleague, who was supposed to be dead years before. Meanwhile there’s been a string of child abductions, and rumors are spreading of a secretive “livestock market” where these children will be auctioned off to pedophiles. Evidence mounts that somehow – it’s almost impossible to believe – this twice-dead policeman was involved with that ring. Continue reading ‘The Blood Road, by Stuart MacBride →

Fiction, Reviews

‘In the Cold Dark Ground,’ by Stuart MacBride

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In the Cold Dark Ground

“Officer, I swear I didn’t mean to read another Logan McRae novel. I soured on Stuart MacBride’s black comedy cop series a while back. But I confused The Blood Road with part of another series of Scottish police procedurals (I must be following about ten), and I bought one. Then I noticed that I hadn’t read the previous book, so I bought that too. Then I realized I didn’t like the books. But I paid good money for them, so I went ahead and read them. I’m not proud of it.”

That’s my personal rationalization for reading In the Cold Dark Ground. Stuart MacBride is a very good author. He knows how to ramp up a story, and he can get off marvelous ironic lines, like, “When he smiled, it was like small children screaming.” But the darkness of the story and the ugliness of most of the characters wore me down. It’s probably an accurate picture of police work; it just leaves me feeling grim. And I started out grim enough.

Anyway, in this book Sergeant Logan McRae of Banff, Scotland, who’s been an inspector but didn’t like it, is faced with doctors’ recommendations that he turn off respiratory support for someone very dear to him. He also discovers that his mother has lied to him all his life about a pretty important matter. Meanwhile, a local businessman is found brutally murdered, and there is evidence of a secret life and deep debts to organized crime. Speaking of organized crime, a local crime lord is dying. He has taken, for some reason, a liking to Logan, and is threatening to leave him his money and whole organization. This would not look good to the Professional Standards department, but it looks even worse to one of that boss’s underlings, a psychopath who has personal plans for Logan involving slow carving and pig feed. Meanwhile that same Professional Standards department is pressuring Logan to find evidence against his superior, Inspector Steel, a blousy lesbian with a remarkably unpleasant personality, but a friend nonetheless.

So Logan has quite a lot on his plate. Things will get very tense before he finds a way out.

In the Cold Dark Ground is compelling, fast-paced, and well-written. I just don’t enjoy the overall experience of entering that world. Your mileage may vary. Cautions for very crude humor.

And I’ve got one more to read.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Missing and the Dead,’ by Stuart MacBride

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The Missing and the Dead

I swore I wasn’t going to read another Stuart MacBride novel.

The last time I read one of his Logan McRae books, it went in a very, very creepy direction, and I dropped it before it could get any worse. I mentioned on this blog that I was done with it.

But one day I was looking for another book to read, and I had a momentary lapse of memory. By the time I remembered what I thought of the series, The Missing and the Dead was on my Kindle. I figured I’d give it a chance.

It didn’t offend me the way the last one did. And I stayed with it to the end. But I’m still not a fan.

Logan McRae used to be a Scottish police detective. But somewhere since the last story I read, he got demoted to uniformed policing in the far north – centered at a station in the town of Banff, on the North Sea. He’s in charge of a small squad, but of course the plainclothes detectives get to do the interesting work. Continue reading ‘The Missing and the Dead,’ by Stuart MacBride →

Fiction, Reviews

‘Broken Skin,’ by Stuart MacBride

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Broken Skin

More and more often, it seems to me, a book series I’m enjoying “jumps the shark,” from my point of view. The reasons vary, but usually they’re political or religious.

I’m dropping the Logan McRae series of dark comic police mysteries for a slightly different reason.

In Broken Skin, we rejoin Detective Sergeant Logan McRae of Aberdeen, Scotland, as he continues to operate (after a fashion) in a chaotically dysfunctional police department, investigating deadly serious crimes. This time a famous football (soccer) player is suspected of a string of sadistic rapes, but the police can’t break his alibi. And a BDSM porn star is discovered murdered in a rather… unconventional way.

I was all in with the story until the very climax, which (to me) was kind of… icky.

Then I moved on to the next book, Flesh House, which involves (I’m not making this up) a serial cannibal. And once I figured out where the story was going…

I metaphorically got up out of my seat and left the theater. None of that for me, sir, thank you very much.

Author Stuart MacBride has made the decision – and it may very well be a wise one in business terms – to go full shockmeister in this otherwise enjoyable series. He seems to be quite successful, so he probably hasn’t misjudged his audience.

But it’s not to my taste.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Dying Light,’ by Stuart MacBride

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Dying Light

The Regents Arms was a little bar on Regent Quay with a three am licence. Not the smartest place in Aberdeen; it was dark, dirty, missing an apostrophe, and smelled of spilt beer and old cigarettes.

Imagine that the Keystone Kops were real policemen in the real world, running around in feckless circles while real criminals carried out their genuine atrocities in technicolor splendor. That’s sort of the impression I get from Stuart MacBride’s series of police procedurals starring Detective Sergeant Logan McRae of Aberdeen, Scotland. No stalwart, heroic cops here – just confused and overworked plods keeping after the criminals until the criminals make a mistake.

I suspect the realism level is pretty high in these darkly comic books. One authentic element is that the detectives don’t have the luxury of concentration. They work several cases at once. In Dying Light, a serial killer is abducting and murdering prostitutes, someone is screwing doors shut and torching homes with families inside, and a young husband has been reported missing.

In the previous book, Cold Granite, which I reviewed a couple weeks ago, DS McRae worked under Inspector Insch, a clownish-looking fat man, but intelligent and concerned about his team. In Dying Light, he’s assigned to Inspector Steel, a raddled lesbian who’s sloppy, lazy, glory-grabbing, and oblivious to her subordinates. McRae’s frustration level spikes as his sleep deficit widens, but he plugs on in his obsessive way, until all the questions get answered in the wake of a pretty explosive climax.

I could easily dislike the Logan McRae books, which are fairly cynical in many ways. But I enjoy the high quality prose and the slapstick, and the fact that the good guys generally muddle through in the end. Hard to believe Sgt. McRae doesn’t find another line of work, though. Cautions must be given for language, adult situations, and disturbing violence.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Cold Granite,’ by Stuart MacBride

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Cold Granite

Behind the approaching van the North Sea raged, grey and huge, the frigid wind making its first landfall since the Norwegian fjords.

I like to tell you right off when I think a book is well done. Cold Granite, by Stuart MacBride, is an extremely well done mystery/thriller, a book that handles a troubling subject about as well as any writer could.

Detective Sergeant Logan McRae has been nicknamed “Lazarus” by his fellow officers. It’s his first day back on the job, after a long convalescence from knife wounds received from a serial killer. He’s hoping to take it easy for the first few weeks, as he still feels some pain.

No hope of that. The first day a three-year-old boy is found murdered and mutilated in a flooded ditch. Soon other children go missing – or are discovered dead. Long hours will be required, in the extremely unpleasant weather of Aberdeen, Scotland in December (the rotten weather is a major character in t this book). Logan will have to deal with sniping associates, demanding (or lazy) superiors, maddening defense attorneys, and persistent news reporters (one of whom attaches himself to Logan as his special project). Apparent connections between murders prove illusory, while apparently separate murders turn out to be linked. It’s one step forward, two steps back all the way to a pretty cinematic climax.

The writing is top-notch, vivid and epigrammatic. The characters of Logan, his fellow officers, and a variety of scaly suspects are well drawn. What particularly impressed me about the story is the way author MacBride conveys the frustrations of the work of policing – I began to wonder why anyone puts up with it. There is no attempt to soften the horrific suffering and deep grief involved in the crimes, but he makes it endurable through a kind of slapstick – Logan’s many frustrations, disappointments, and injuries are not laughable, but they’re presented in a way that lightens the mood and keeps the whole effort from being too much for the reader to bear.

I very much enjoyed Cold Granite, and look forward to reading further Logan McRae mysteries. Many cautions are in order – language, sexual themes, and very disturbing crimes against children.