If you like your detective stories hard, cold, wet, and pretty revolting at times then Cold Granite will appeal. This is Stuart MacBride's first novel in the Logan McRae series and it can be placed firmly in the Tartan Noir form of crime fiction.

Cold Granite begins at a crime scene on a cold, rainy, night in Aberdeen, Scotland, aka Granite City. It is the first day back on the job for Detective Sergeant Logan McRea after spending the last year recuperating from stab wounds. Logan expected to be eased back into the job but instead finds himself with a new boss and in the center of the investigation of the murder of a four-year old boy.

Other children disappear and the police feel pressure from the higher-ups, the public, and the press. Compounding the problem is the leak from within the department feeding information to a particularly annoying reporter who is despised equally by his co-workers and the police. Are all these crimes against children related? Is there a paedophile serial killer at work in Aberdeen?

The author is excellent in his descriptions and the reader won't have difficulty picturing the scenes. He is particularly vivid with the crime scenes and autopsies. He also seems to have taken great delight in describing in horrid detail the hording habits of a refuse collector nicknamed Roadkill. Think about it... it is worse than you just thought.

MacBride introduces multiple story lines and deftly manages them to satisfactory conclusions. I wouldn't say that there is anything clumsy or predictable in the way he handles the situations or in the way that Logan finds the truth.

(This is fiction based on historical events.)

My synopsis

Thomas Blake Glover was a Scotsman, born in Aberdeen. His wanderlust and need for adventure saw him join Jardine Matheson in Japan. He soon started his own company, trading in anything that made money. He supported the rebel clans against the Shogun, helped restore the monarchy to Japan, and his personal life rumoured to be the inspiration for the story in Madame Butterfly.

Wikipedia entry.

Review

I must preface this with a warning: I adore historical fiction.

I also date a Scotsman, and am extremely interested in Scottish history as well. Singapore, where I'm from, shows its own Scottish influences (a bridge that is now only open to foot traffic bears a plaque, stating it was built in Glasgow), so I was really keen to read this book when I saw it in the office. I would have finished it weeks ago, but reading other books took priority. I finally raced to the finish, so to speak, last night.

I thought Alan Spence's storytelling was very good, and he wove fiction with fact very well. I read in the acknowledgements (and have seen it in the news as well) that this started out as a film project, and I can really picture it. Frankly, I find the tale more believable than The Last Samurai.

I'm not entirely sure how well I can review this without giving too much away, but I found it very realistic - how expatriate men behaved (and continue to behave, you can't change human nature!), xenophobia in Japan (at the time), and business ethics and tactics!