Laidlaw (Laidlaw Trilogy)

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There’s a lot to like in this book. The plot is engrossing and intriguing, it’s well written in a style as gritty as the city. Laidlaw is likeable and fascinating. He’s bleak, abrasive and a paradox of a man and not easy to live with as his wife Ena will attest. I really like his brand of philosophy which is his own and therefore unique! Harkness is a good character too and the pair develop a bond based on insults. There are some excellent analogies in the storytelling and some very good descriptions. There are nice touches of wry humour which provides a contrast to the bleak story and to some of the harshest characters and there’s very realistic and colourful dialogue between them. The book build well to a dramatic conclusion. It is great entertainment, but McIlvanney's achievement is to transcend the conventions of the crime novel even while he observes them. The trilogy is one of the finest things in modern fiction, in the Chandler and Simenon class." - Spectator (UK) That's really all you need to know about the plot. Cops, thugs, snitches & families.....just some of the peripheral characters you'll meet along the way. It's a master class in misdirection as Laidlaw drags the long suffering Lilley around Glasgow's less respectable streets. The bonus is the gritty, poetic prose. From descriptions of Glasgow & its citizens to Laidlaw's dryly sardonic dialogue, this was such a pleasure to read.

Stunning. Possibly the best-written crime novel I've read. It continually astounded me with its depth and surprising metaphors. There are noir tropes here, their meaning and resonance vastly amplified; I said similar about Ian Rankin a few months ago when I first read him, but this was like Rankin tripled, quadrupled - this, published in 1977, was one of the inspirations for Rebus. Enters Laidlaw, a gritty detective, a man who quotes philosophers, who prefers to get his answers in the street rather than the station. Of ourse, this puts him on the outside, which is where he likes it best.A classic of the genre…If you only read one crime novel this year, this should be it.' - Guardian (UK) Laidlaw" is an amazing feat of writing from first to last. It's not a conventional mystery -- we know who the killer is right from the first chapter, when McIlvanney describes how odd it is to be running through the streets with blood on you. Your opinion of me at the moment worries me exactly as much as dandruff would a chopped-off head. I don't have to justify myself to you. I've got to justify myself to me. And that's a bloody sight harder. [...] If everybody could waken up tomorrow morning and have the courage of their doubts, not their convictions, the millenium would be here. I think false certainties are what destroy us.

Sometimes, rarely, the sadness and the cynicism are relieved by the sort of self-deprecating humour the Scots are so fond of: The story portrayed Glasgow as a sentient being, the feeling that all is being watched, nothing goes unnoticed, nothing is left to chance. It never forgets. DC Laidlaw is a bit of a loose cannon. He doesn’t dance to the beat of anyone’s drum but his own. He has the measure of his superior officer, DI Milligan. He’s blindly ambitious but sleekit. He won’t think twice about bending the rules to serve his sense of entitlement. He can’t keep tabs on DC Laidlaw, a man that stops at nothing to get his man – even staying in a hotel for the duration of the case leaving his unhappy wife, Ena, and their three children, he’s a one-man-band. Across the street the door of the Corn Exchange opened suddenly and a small man popped out onto the pavement, as if the pub had rifted. He foundered in a way that suggested fresh air wasn’t his element and at once Harkness saw that he was beyond what his father called the pint of no return.” I don’t. But I don’t really fancy anyone else as one either. I hate violence so much I don’t intend to let anybody practise it on me with impunity. If it came to the bit, he’d win the first time all right. But I’d win the second time, if here was enough of me left to have one. No question about that. I’d arrange it that way. I don’t have fights. I have wars.’” It's hard to comprehend how radically different William McIllvanney's novels were from anything that preceded them: ( Val McDermid).

Rankin που δεν μετέτρεψε τον Laidlaw σε Rebus-που σεβάστηκε τους χαρακτήρες και των δύο ηρώων και που το αποτέλεσμα είναι ομοιογενές.Το βιβλίο αυτό είναι μια καλή αρχή για να γνωρίζετε έναν αξιοπρόσεκτο συγγραφέα, και,αν διαβάζετε στα αγγλικά, να αναζητήσετε την τριλογία-ελπίζοντας πάντα πως κάποια στιγμή ίσως μεταφραστούν και στα ελληνικά.

A contributor to BBC2's Newsnight Review, he also presented his own TV series, Ian Rankin's Evil Thoughts, on Channel 4 in 2002. He recently received the OBE for services to literature, and opted to receive the prize in his home city of Edinburgh, where he lives with his partner and two sons.From time to time, Laidlaw gets to make his views known directly, as he engages with Harkness in lively debates about the role of the policeman in society, about ethics and about personal responsibility. Most novels in this category tend to offer good guys and bad guys. McIlvanney refuses to offer the reader that comfortable choice. The character in the book who receives the most negative portrayal, and the most enmity from Laidlaw, is one of his fellow policemen. That character is someone who divides the world into good and evil, and Laidlaw detests him for that. La búsqueda del asesino no va a ser solo cosa de la policía, hay más gente interesada en encontrarlo. Habrá que ver quien lo atrapa primero.

The majority of our study spaces are available without booking. There are lots of different spaces across campus for drop-in study. Use Spacefinder to find a space that suits you. Laidlaw is very beautifully written with some wonderful lines. Glasgow is unquestionably the star of this novel and, having lived there, I can confirm this really evokes the place. Laidlaw also powerfully evokes an era. The brutality of the 1970s is here in spades. There are numerous excellent set pieces. One cop/criminal hard man scene in a dodgy pub in the East End of Glasgow has strong echoes of that classic De Niro and Pacino restaurant scene in Michael Mann's Heat despite this novel obviously predating that film. It's a carefully choreographed dance with the rules changing as it happens and the realisation that the men have more in common than may first appear, and a grudging mutual respect. Jaw droppingly good. He was potentially a violent man who hated violence, a believer in fidelity who was unfaithful, an active man who longed for understanding … He knew nothing to do but inhabit the paradoxes.”

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It's fine, and worth a read for those that loved the original trilogy but far from essential. I suspect this is 20% McIlvanney and 80% Rankin. If only it had been the other way round. To quote another GR review: "This isn't a crime writer who decided to get 'all literary'. McIlvanney is a deeply authentic Scottish (Glasgow) writer and poet who decided in the late 1970's (after having written some successful and gritty novels) that he could talk about existential decay now through the device of a crime sequence...this is a magnificent little book. It is raw, it is philosophical, it is grim, it is character and plot and language driven."