Irvine Welsh

Jaded Edinburgh cop and substance-abuser (probably a redundant descriptor in an Irvine Welsh novel...) Ray Lennox has been granted compassionate leave after a particularly traumatic child-murder case leads to a breakdown, and he is spending some time relaxing in Miami with his fiancée. Within 48 hours of landing in the US, however, he finds himself in a situation where a young girl needs his protection from sexual predators, in circumstances where he can't very well turn to the proper authorities for help, and of course all the doubts and questions flying around in his mind from the recent investigation come back to haunt him.

Despite the obviously contrived setup, this turns out to be a very engaging, disturbing book, whose brutal plot somehow manages to deal with the fraught subject of sexual abuse of children in a sensitive and often surprisingly subtle way. Although it is probably a book you will want to read quickly to get it over with...… (mer)

I should have read this years ago really. Better late than never!

To be perfectly honest, I've never been much of a fan of writing phonetically in dialect, but it didn't take me long to get used to it, and it was interesting to see how some of the slang has changed (e.g. Spud's verbal tic is "likesay", which probably died out in the 90s because I don't remember hearing it before). (It's actually also slightly unfamiliar spelling - for example "ur" is used to mean "are" but I'm used to using it online to mean "you're"). I'm also ambivalent about the short-story structure, as it made the overall story slightly incoherent for me. But those are ultimately minor quibbles - the stories were vibrant and the fact that I know those locations made it come alive even more for me. Even though it's a world I rarely encountered in real life.

I think this is one of those rare books where I prefer the film, though. The book is excellent, but I think there's something snappy and colourful about the film.… (mer)