The Blood Tide

DS Max Craigie is taking a few days away from the job, touring the west coast of Scotland on his motorbike, when he receives a phone call out of the blue from an old friend, fellow copper Hamish Beattie, who’s just attended a suicide on the Erskine Bridge.

Hamish sounds worried, and that’s an unusual enough occurrence for Max to want to make some more enquiries. The man who jumped to his death only moments after Hamish arrived on the scene claimed that he was being forced to jump to protect his family. He also mentioned a death at a loch.

When possible connections surface between the man who jumped from the bridge, the disappearance of a fisherman in the Highlands and a second apparent suicide, Max’s nose for trouble starts twitching. His job is to ferret out corruption within Police Scotland and
the more Max learns, the more he dislikes the smell of what he starts to dig up, especially not when the Hardie family end up in the mix. Scotland’s premier crime family make the Krays look like a bunch of fluffy bunnies and it’s not the first time Max has tangled with them.

Every cop seems to need their own personal nemesis these days and in Max Craigie’s case it’s Tam Hardie and his nasty sons. Hardie blames Max for the long stretch he’s currently doing in HMP Edinburgh aka Saughton jail. Being behind bars hasn’t done much to put a crimp in Hardie senior’s criminal activities, and he is concerned about attempts being made to muscle in on his territory. Hardie is also determined to get even with Max, so when he’s made an offer he can’t refuse, things are about to get personal pretty quickly. And everything Max hold dear comes under threat – again.

I enjoyed Max Craigie’s first appearance in Dead Man’s Grave but thought we’d seen the last of the Hardies. I was pleasantly surprised when they made a second appearance, and even more pleased that I wasn’t disappointed in some things on my wish list for the second book. If you don’t like spoilers, look away now … Nutmeg the dog is fine, so it’s safe to venture in! Oh hush, every right-thinking crime reader wants to know that the dog survives.

DC Janie Calder, Max’s unconventional sidekick, does as good a job as ever of winding him up, bringing some much-needed amusement to the story, as does their boss, the entertainingly uncouth DI Ross Fraser of the Policing Standards Reassurance Team, a unit with more names in its title than people in the team, unless you count Chief Constable Chris Macdonald in their number. I like all of them, which also makes me predisposed to like the books, as reading about a bunch of people I can’t stand isn’t really my idea of fun. The villains are suitably villainous and it’s certainly not a forgone conclusion that the day will be saved.

Neil Lancaster does an excellent job of striking a balance between characterisation and plot, with enough focus on the former to give depth and enough on the latter to keep the story jogging along at a very respectable pace. The sudden, frequently unexpected flashes of violence kept me on my toes but never felt gratuitous, and the equally frequent changes of scene and point of view provide plenty of interest and fresh perspectives on a complex scenario with deep roots in an establishment that has by no means cleaned up its act, despite the continuing efforts of its smallest and most unconventional team.

I’m looking forward to delving into the corrupt underbelly of Police Scotland again and – for the record, officer – my wish list is exactly the same as last time!