2016: a literary overview

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A Decent Ride, Irvine Welsh

The Leith laureate's 10th novel gives voice to one Terry 'Juice' Lawson, the outrageous corkscrew-permed taxi driver who first erupted in 2001's tour-de-force coming-of-age tale Glue.

Juice's boastful sexual bravado often seems culled from some deranged outtake from those 1970s Confessions Of ... films (and as I was reading his dialogue the image that most readily formed in my imagination was Robin Askwith in a green shellsuit - aside from the surreal passages directly narrated by his knob.) But bawdy and outrageously overblown descriptions of sex are a familiar staple of Welsh's unapologetically sledgehammer satire - along with dialogue that sizzles like hangover-cure bacon, and genuine pathos.

The story itself reveals a sensitive core to the black cab lothario, far from the two-dimensional shagger he portrays in Sick Boy's low budget pornos. Crushed as he is by a diagnosis of a heart condition that will render sex potentially fatal, he perseveres (as the Leith motto would fully endorse), helping out the girls working for the sauna-owning gangster he runs errands for, as well as looking out for his half-brother Jonty, an innocent guy with learning difficulties, a big heart and a bigger dick. When Juice also makes the acquaintance of an egotistical American visiting 'Skatlin' in search of golf courses and whisky collectables to plunder, it's difficult to avoid the notion that the inspiration for this brash character is now heading for the White House.

As an Edinburgh citizen I relish each Welsh publication with the same excitment I once reserved for new releases by The Clash. Sure there are flaws and The Guardian reviewer hated it, but unlike the aforementioned snippy journalist I recognise most of these characters. My first flat was in Wheatfield Place, two minutes away from 'The Pub With No Name' so I know full well the extent to which said establishment was a hotbed of radgeness. (I recall one exuberant karaoke when a full-scale swedge kicked-off during which the TV displaying the lyrics crashed over a table of drinks.)

As with all of Welsh's previous nine novels and shorts anthologies, the key defining factor is the way the prose consistently provides the most joyous celebration of our capital city's vernacular you'll ever see committed to print.

His Bloody Project, Graeme Macrae Burnet

Crime novels don’t regularly feature on the Man Booker long list, but reviews for Kilmarnock-born Burnet’s psychological thriller have been universally superlative, and rightly so. Set in a West Highlands community in 1869, this story of the brutal murder of three members of a neighbour’s family by a socially awkward young man, Roderick MacRae, is utterly captivating.

We know MacRae is guilty because he admits this from the outset. But Burnet challenges the perceptions behind what might appear to be an open and shut case by introducing the journal written by MacRae in his prison cell. This compelling narrative not only blurs the boundaries between fiction and family history (with footnotes relating to archives), it draws us back through the centuries on an enthralling journey to less-enlightened times. Victoria's Empire might have been sprawling across the world in all its pomp and pageantry, but this community seems as isolated as natives in sunnier climes. Here tenant crofters eke out a grim existence on their absentee laird’s extensive estate, the threat of summary eviction forever hanging over them, their basic rights practically no better than the livestock often sharing their roofs.

The reader is soon torn between the human reaction to the scale of the monstrous crime and the extent to which the insanity plea his defence lawyer is arguing for may be justified. This argument is all the more poignant given that the outcome of the trial will mean either life imprisonment or the noose. This dilemma, that MacRae’s life is literally hanging in the balance, keeps the tension taut to the final page.

Ostland, David Thomas

This chilling novel by David Thomas begins in relatively familiar crime fiction territory, albeit in the historical context of 1940s Berlin, with detectives hunting a serial killer. But when the case is solved, police chief George Hauser's 'reward' is promotion to an SS unit on the eastern front, where the full savagery of the Nazi racial war is being enacted.

Previously a principled upholder of the law, Hauser sinks into the immoral abyss of the 'master race' when he joins the lines of SS firing squads killing men, women and children at point blank range, for hours at a time, days on end. After the war, Hauser's life turns full circle when he is pursued by detectives hunting war criminals.

At times difficult to read, this is a vitally important book as any literature exposing the Holocaust must always be. The events related by Thomas may have happened 70 years ago but one consistent aspect of history is the way darker events continually repeat themselves - as massacre survivors in Rwanda or Yugoslavia will attest.

Equally concerning, despite the worldwide revulsion in 1945 when the liberation of the death camps revealed skeletal children in striped pyjamas, despite the nonsensical medical experiments conducted on live human beings, despite the gas chambers and the mounds of corpses, swastikas are still daubed on synagogues and Twitter is populated by deluded white supremacist sociopaths celebrating their 'master race.' In the 1930s and 1940s they wore red and black armbands and got away with murder. Today they troll.

If You Liked School, You'll Love Work, Irvine Welsh

While Welsh’s longer pieces allow him to develop the rich assortment of characters he invariably amasses to bring his stories to life, his bare-knuckle prose is ideally distilled into shorter fiction.

Eleven years after his last anthology, Ecstasy, we touch base with ravers coming down in the Nevada desert, bitching diners in a New York restaurant, a Texan biographer who has a macabre encounter with a Miss Arizona whose glamorous sparkle has long-since faded, and an English bar owner ducking and diving among the other ex-pats and smalltime gangsters in the Canaries. There is also a novella set in the Kingdom of Fife, featuring the sexual attraction of an ex-jockey for ‘posh burds’ wearing jodhpurs.

The strengths of each vary considerably but overall the collection is as smuttily entertaining as you could imagine.

Long Time Dead, Tony Black

Black is a virtuoso exponent of Tartan Noir - Scottish crime fiction delivered with observation as sharp as a machete. Gus Drury, an ex-hack turned PI, is investigating the truth behind a hanging at Edinburgh University. He discovers this was no suicide and digging deeper opens a monstrous can of worms involving sinister secret societies and corrupt cops.

The dogged investigator soon finds he is stepping on very dangerous toes. Sometimes he comes to after a savage beating. On other occasions his blackouts arise from the battles with alcohol that have driven deep rifts in his private life.

Rarely slipping out of fifth gear, Drury's first-person narrative comes across as a hardboiled collision of Raymond Chandler, Quinten Tarantino and inevitably, given the Edinburgh backdrop, Irvine Welsh. The fact that the protagonist is teetering between becoming a crime victim himself and succumbing to liver failure makes his determination to expose the villians who are after his whisky-soaked blood completely captivating.

Although this exhilarating read represents Drury's fourth outing (he features in Black's previous novels Paying For It, Gutted and Loss) the novel works perfectly well as a standalone.

The Tale of Sawney Bean, Kevin Kennedy

When I downloaded this eBook I was expecting something between The Hills Have Eyes and The Descent, except set around the 15th century. But I was surprised to find that Kevin Kennedy's striking novella was far removed from any gratuitous gorefest.

Despite being based on an individual dubbed 'the Ayrshire Cannibal,' the central character here is no bloodthirsty psychopath. Instead the author has weaved an equally sinister narrative by focusing on the unravelling relationship between Bean and the enigmatic girl he first befriends then runs off with, Sarah. What then unfolds is far more heartbreaking than endless descriptions of randoms being pickled. Estranged from civilization, we observe the development of Sawney and Sarah's extended family, how their symbiotic relationship strengthens but ultimately wanes as subsequent children born of incest suffer from genetic defects.

Historians will argue whether or not there was ever any truth behind this legend of cave-dwelling cannibals. Kennedy has created a unique and sympathetic version of the story, describing a man's struggle to retain his human spirit as the reluctant chieftain of a dysfunctional clan, who can only watch in despair as his offspring gradually lose their humanity in the darkness.

Jock Stein, the Definitive Biography, Archie Macpherson

Although journalists learned to respect the healthy boundaries Stein maintained around his players, his club and above all, his family, longstanding BBC football commentator Macpherson came closer than most to uncovering the truth behind the myths. His biography is a fascinating study of the man who began his working life hacking coal deep beneath Lanarkshire, then ended up carving his name in history as one of the most successful British football managers ever.

As a player, firstly with Albion Rovers, then Welsh side Llanelli Town, and finally Celtic, the club with which he became synonymous, he was never regarded as more than a journeyman until an ankle injury prompted his early retirement. But as he went on to forge a glittering managerial career, he demonstrated a singular vision, determination and ambition, with an uncanny ability to recognize player qualities and forensically analyze the strengths and weaknesses of opponents.

His story begins at the peak, in 1967, with Celtic poised to become the first British side to win the European Cup, a feat all the more remarkable given that his entire squad were born within a 30-mile radius of Parkhead. We then rewind to Stein’s Protestant upbringing in Burnbank; for many the wrong side of the west of Scotland’s insane religious divide for someone with managerial ambitions at Celtic. Initially reserve coach at Parkhead, his young charges included some of the cubs who would later become his Lisbon Lions – Billy McNeill, Bobby Murdoch and John Clark. Stein felt the religious aspect hanging over him, so he went on to manage Dunfermline and Hibernian, before returning to Glasgow's east end as Celtic manager in March 1965..

In embracing this role, when the Hoops were struggling in the league, he showed his conviction to confront anyone who would decry a player’s religious persuasion, no matter which side of the Old Firm schism they spat their primordial bile from. (Included among the illustrations is a striking photograph of Stein clambering into the terraces to remonstrate with the singers of bigoted Republican songs, a truly astonishing image for any Old Firm manager that is never likely to be replicated.) But his drive for success was absolute, with players becoming all-too-familiar with dressing room meltdowns after poor results. Nor did he ever rest on his laurels, with many of his legendary Lisbon Lions finding their reputations secondary to his ambitions when it came to rebuilding his squad to continue winning trophies.

After serving Celtic from 1965 to 1978 he suffered the ignominy of being offered a position as the club's retail manager when he’d been expecting a shoe-in to a place on the board. He departed to Leeds United for 44 days, before becoming Scotland manager.

There are many highs - Lisbon, the embarrassment of silverware his all-conquering teams accumulated,including nine Scottish Championships in a row, total domination of the Old Firm fixtures, further European success. There are also lows - the 1974 European Cup tie where Athletico Madrid players kicked mercurial winger Jinky Johnstone around like a tin can, a near-fatal car crash in 1975, recrimination over star players falling out of favour with him, and ultimately the moment his life was taken at the age of 62 in Wales's Ninian Park after the big man had watched Scotland securing a qualification play-off spot in the 1986 World Cup.

As another legendary Scottish manager from a mining community, Liverpool's Bob Shankly, remarked after that heady night in Portugal in 1967, ‘John, you’re immortal now.’