Lennox (udgave 2019)

Ian Rankin and now Craig Russell. Are there any more scottish writers of quality that I should be aware of...?
I'm quite partial to good noir storytelling. And this a good example of this. Neo-noir?
It's always more difficult to sustain a tale told in the first person narrative, with everything that it implies. And Russell comes off at the end in flying colours.
The sense of place, the gloom and the ever-present outfall from a brutal war (WWII) is palpable. All noir settings are there: rapid-fire dialogue, lone-wolf investigator, hardboiled ice princesses, perpetual rain and fog... Boogey could play the Lennox character :)
What kept me turning the pages was not the many twists and turns, but Russell’s characters. The dialog is quite up to the mark. ( )

An introduction to the series telling about a Canadian ex-soldier who is making a living in 1950's Glasgow.
The "Three Kings" of the Glasgow underworld hire him to investigate the murder of two up and coming thugs. He also does another investigation on the side, that gets very complicated, as does the story of the two murders.
Someone tries to set him up and the Glasgow police of the time have a very "hands on" approach to interrogation.
Grim, atmospheric and well written. Also very well narrated. ( )

Bri8lliant, very atmospheric of the 1950's. Just loved the character, Lennox. ( )

Glasgow in the 1950’s was a very tough place to be, yet Lennox, ex-Canadian though he may be, appears to be completely comfortable on it’s gritty, smog draped streets. As a slightly shady investigator, he is able to move among both the city’s gangsters and the police, but always as an associate, never as a friend.

When the first, McGahern twin, Tam, is murdered, Lennox had only a casual interest in the story. Then one evening the other twin, Frank, approaches him for help, but, not wanting to get involved, Lennox rebuffs him. There is a confrontation which the police have to break up. Later that night, Frank is also murdered, putting Lennox right in the frame. He realizes that in order to clear himself from suspicion he must search for the real murderer and the reason these two lesser gangsters were snuffed out.

Lennox is a atmospheric, tartan noir that Craig Russell fills with all the right ingredients. Lead by the tough wise-cracking anti-hero, this is a story filled with violence, hard-boiled characters - both male and female, and the dark, brooding presence of Glasgow with it’s working class environment of shipyards and steel mills. Dark, intense and well plotted, Lennox is a great start to this new series. ( )

This is the first book in a new series by Craig Russell, who has had success with his series about Detective Jan Fabel, set in Hamburg. However, here the setting is 1950s Glasgow, and the eponymous character is an enquiry agent with some distinctly dodgy methods, and who gets most of his work from the ‘Three Kings’; a triumvirate of gangsters, who between them are behind most of the crime in the city.

When up and coming gangster Tam McGahern is murdered, his twin brother Frankie asks Lennox to find out who’s behind it. But then Frankie himself ends up dead and Lennox finds himself in the frame for the murder. As he gets drawn into investigating the matter, he finds himself in ever more dangerous situations, never knowing who he can trust and who is not to be believed – and he discovers that things are far more complicated than he could have imagined…

Glasgow and its underworld is certainly brought into vivid focus here, and I felt able to easily imagine the atmosphere of the city. The story itself moves along at a rapid pace and never allows time for the reader to become bored. There are also plenty of twists and turns, at times so many so that the story became a little tied up in itself.

Lennox himself is not actually a particularly nice or likeable character; however, he is the nearest thing to a hero to be found in this novel, which is populated by criminals of all persuasions, with varying degrees of ruthlessness. The book is narrated by Lennox himself, which means that the reader only gets to know what he knows, as he finds it out. Unfortunately, it also meant that for me anyway, I did at times find his character jarring. He had a habit of saying something, and then adding a little quip on the end, apparently to demonstrate how witty or ironic he was being. The other problem was that a lot of the characters were very stereotyped, especially the criminals (and there aren’t many characters who aren’t criminals).

Nonetheless, this book is plot driven more than character driven, and the fast moving story, together with the problems which Lennox faces – which just keep piling up on top of each other – mean that it is never less than an entertaining read.

So would I read another book in this series? Possibly, but I wouldn’t rush out to get hold of a copy. I have read one book in the Jan Fabel series and I definitely preferred that one. If you like your crime stories cosy and funny, this probably isn’t the book for you – but if you like a more bleak and violent setting, you might want to give this one a try. ( )