Novels No. 56 (LL374)

 

Neil Lancaster. Dead Man's Grave. 2021. UK: HQ/HarperCollins, 2022.

Scrounging the in-house library again, it's a return to a more traditional police procedural. DS Max Craigie is teamed up with DC Janie Calder when Scotland's biggest crime family calls on them to locate a missing person. Their head, Tam "Peeler" Hardie, went off to the Highlands in vague pursuit of family history; son Tam Jr hates the need for police assistance. In rather short order, the elderly man's body is found in a graveyard; an unstable local man, Willie Leitch, confesses to killing him. DI Sally Smith—in whose jurisdiction it happened—is pressured to declare the case closed. The perpetrator, deemed too schizoid for questioning or a trial, has been firmly incarcerated in a mental asylum. Max is not happy—the Hardies are in his area—because he knows that Tam Jr and his brothers will wreak some retributive havoc.

And so an ancient feud has been reactivated, and Tam Sr will be avenged by the deaths of everyone in the Leitch family. When innkeeper Duncan Ferguson dies in a drastic car crash, Max learns he's Willie's cousin. But Police Scotland are not buying a connection; not gonna stir up the Hardie pot. Max is officially sidelined from investigations not his to begin with. Does that stop him? Two surviving cousins are at risk with only Max and Janie racing to outwit the bad guys. Even worse, the reluctance of their superiors to confront the evidence indicates corruption somewhere in the ranks. Regular police work involves access to or use of all kinds of technical equipment; it's even more difficult and time-consuming when the criminals have penetrated their systems. Max needs to keep tight control of the rage his PTSD can produce.

A bit of a slow starter, but plenty of suspense builds up. Of course it's fiction, but to imagine the extent of police corruption is in itself shocking. And yet, and yet—recall the similar echoes in Ian Rankin's Rebus series. Law enforcement nerds will love this one, especially if they understand the not always explained Scottish (and some general) police acronym terminology. Examples: CSI, SIO, PolSA, CSM, MIT, FLO, GBH, MDK, RF & GSM, PIRC, GMP.

Good Guys

▪ "They're properly bad people, so don't let them know anything about you and never drop your guard." (13)

▪ "He's probably the biggest gangster in Scotland, and this is going to be very high-profile. The dead body of a gangster, hidden in a centuries-old grave, will be on the front cover of every newspaper." (47)

▪ "If I show you a video clip can you see if you can lip-read what the people are saying?" (114)

▪ "He thinks you're a loose cannon, and he's considering suspending you for breach of confidentiality, computer misuse and perverting the course of justice. He's giving me shit about my lack of supervision of you, and he's on his way down here right bloody now." (146)

▪ "The homicide command, it would appear, is riven with corruption, at many levels, and it seems this extends to senior officer level." (273)

▪ "I know Slattery and I don't like the bastard one little bit, the snidey wee radge." (274)

Bad Guys

▪ "You need to find my father, or we'll be forced to use our own resources and methods to do so, which may cause unforeseen collateral difficulties for law-enforcement agencies. Do we understand each other?" (20)

▪ "It's unfortunate for you, Joe, that you're going to be the evidence that the Hardies are not only alive and well, but they're bloody worse than ever." (97)

▪ "Well watch Craigie carefully. Last thing we need is a rogue cop on our backs. Make sure you've something on the bastard." (170)

▪ The newcomer looked at Janie and said, "One move from you, bitch, and I'll shoot both of you." (187)

▪ "You aren't my only route into the police, trust me. You're just the person I avail myself of most often." (199)

▪ "I want you to tighten up on that bastard. Get his phone intercepted. He's the key to this. We get his phone, we find out where the others are." (236)

Yiftach Reicher Atir. The English Teacher. 2013. USA: Penguin Books, tr. 2016.

Still scrounging for my next read (ya hear me, TPL?). And sometimes a hidden wonder is found. Written by a former Mossad agent, the book details the making of an undercover agent. Not just any skilled agent performing missions for the Israeli government, but the very risky job of living in the enemy's country. Forget current politics; this review is not a polemic. The Mossad is/was renowned for its effective intelligence gathering and well-run secret operations.

Rachel was placed, and remained for four years, in "the Arab capital city" (read Beirut? Damascus?). During which time she undertook dangerous missions within and without that country. All the while teaching English at a language school, as so many travelling youngsters do, seemingly a straightforward Canadian. Rachel's case officer, Ehud, had supervised her extensive physical and mental training. So much responsibility is heaped on these agents who lead double lives, whose identities must not overlap. She became highly successful at missions she'd been given, still in her twenties. But that's been behind her for fifteen years when she disappears after her father's funeral and Mossad departments are going nuts trying to find her. Ehud, now retired, recounts much of her secret life to "Joe," an old field-agent friend of his—in the hope of uncovering an elusive clue to her whereabouts. He wonders if he missed something important in her true character, or in her useful relationship to Rashid, an Arab businessman.

Difficult to absorb all the facets of being embedded in a disguise, being prepared for spontaneous decisions in the field, subduing fear, facing eventual (and sudden) evacuation, abandoning attachments, and attempting to resume a "normal" life.

Bits

▪ He's just come to rescue the commanders of the past from the mess that they caused when they enabled Rachel to live her own life and paid no attention to what their operative had been doing after leaving the service. (17)

▪ "In the Arab country she would be alone and we would know of her only from her reports." (40)

▪ "I was an experienced professional, and I knew I was preparing her for her first time, her baptism of fire, solo, and she needed to be treated like a war machine." (47)

▪ "Think of her loneliness, Joe, loneliness in the middle of a crowd. The loneliness of someone leading a double life, hiding her objectives and her motives and the things most important to her. Think of the longing for warmth, love, someone to listen to you, to want you." (116)

▪ "I don't know when this happened, but from the first day she slept with him she knew she wasn't prepared to give him up, and that was the day she started lying to us too." (134)

▪ "We believe our operatives. We have to trust them even when we know they aren't telling us the whole truth." (187)

▪ He didn't think Ehud was lying, or deliberately withholding vital information. (195)

▪ "We are looking for her to make sure she doesn't divulge the secrets she knows. He is looking for her because he loves her." (197)

Hindsight

"There's some thing intoxicating in our work; suddenly it's permissable to lie, you can put on an act, and everything is sanctioned by the state. The operative is licensed to commit crimes. He steals, sometimes he even kills, and instead of going to prison he gets a commendation. ...

In hindsight, I realize she was really just a child and we let her play some very dangerous games. We did something that wasn't right, Joe, we didn't succeed in rehabilitating her after she came back from there, and something in her life was fucked up. This is what we need to clarify." (33)