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The Long Glasgow Kiss by Craig Russell

Lennox is a Canadian private investigator who has decided to live in Glasgow, despite the Glaswegian police force’s suggestion that he travels back across the Atlantic. It is the 1950’s and Glasgow is a tough, dangerous city. Even the police have a reputation of extracting confessions out of suspects regardless of whether they committed the crime or not.

When the story starts, Lennox is more concerned about his relationship with Lorna MacFarlane and the possibility of getting tickets to the boxing from her father than working on a case. Her father is Jimmy ‘Small Change’ MacFarlane, possibly Glasgow’s most successful bookie of the time, and runs one of the biggest operations at Glasgow’s dog racing track. When Lennox takes Lorna home after a romantic night out, they arrive to the sight of police cars in front of the house and of Superintendent Willie McNab in the doorway. Lorna’s father has been murdered by an assailant using a statue of Jimmy’s best dog, Danny Boy.

McNab makes it very clear that he doesn’t like Lennox at all, in fact the feeling is mutual, and he also makes it very clear he doesn’t want Lennox from investigating the case. A hard gangster called Willie Sneddon however has other ideas and also wants Lennox to investigate a boxer under his control, who is being threatened, and Mr Sneddon is not a man you turn down. The boxer just happens to be the one of the fighters in the match Lennox was hoping to see.

He is also hired to find the brother of an attractive celebrity who has disappeared in intriguing circumstances. It would seem that Sammy Pollock sometimes sang in a club owned by one of the other two gangsters who in turn owned Glasgow. He finds the brother, Sammy Pollock is connected to Largo, a criminal even more powerful than the ‘three kings’ but also very elusive. Lennox is certain he can track Largo down, but can he?

I found The Long Glasgow Kiss a cross between an American detective novel and a British one as it features a private detective who works for criminals, and doesn’t have a good working relationship with police in a city ruled by criminals similar to mobsters, like many US detective novels, but has the setting of Glasgow and the dark British humour. It makes an intelligent read with its own brand of uniqueness and is a great follow-up to Russell’s novel ‘Lennox’.

RRP $35.00
Published and distributed by Allen and Unwin

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