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A review by fictionfan
McCormack Thriller 2 by Liam McIlvanney
2.0
A standard Glasgow gangland police procedural, full of bent coppers, violence, sectarianism, prostitution and foul language. I was bored before I even got halfway through - I feel I've read this book a million times before. Nothing in it makes it stand out from the overcrowded field. Glasgow gangland has been done to death - please let's bury it now, and move on. There's more to Glasgow and Scotland than this.
Somehow McIlvanney never makes me feel he's writing from knowledge - it always feels like he's writing from research, and there are odd little anachronisms and word choices that slightly jar my Glaswegian ear. I know it's totally unfair to compare him to his father, whose books reeked of authenticity, but honestly Liam asks for it by setting his books in the same time and place as William's classics of the genre. He's clearly trying to inhabit his father's territory, but the problem is William actually lived there and then - Liam doesn't and didn't. I wish he'd write books set in New Zealand where he's lived for years, or if he must try to get in on the crowded Scottish crime scene, then I wish he'd set his books in a different time period or take them out of Glasgow. Then perhaps it would be possible to avoid comparisons that don't work to his advantage. I believe he has the basic skills to do much better than this formulaic stuff, and I hope one day he will.
Somehow McIlvanney never makes me feel he's writing from knowledge - it always feels like he's writing from research, and there are odd little anachronisms and word choices that slightly jar my Glaswegian ear. I know it's totally unfair to compare him to his father, whose books reeked of authenticity, but honestly Liam asks for it by setting his books in the same time and place as William's classics of the genre. He's clearly trying to inhabit his father's territory, but the problem is William actually lived there and then - Liam doesn't and didn't. I wish he'd write books set in New Zealand where he's lived for years, or if he must try to get in on the crowded Scottish crime scene, then I wish he'd set his books in a different time period or take them out of Glasgow. Then perhaps it would be possible to avoid comparisons that don't work to his advantage. I believe he has the basic skills to do much better than this formulaic stuff, and I hope one day he will.