The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter

This is the first installment in Malcolm Mackay's "Glasgow Trilogy" which centers on the criminal underworld of that Scottish city. Library Journal refers to this book as an example of the increasingly popular body of Scottish crime literature known as "tartan noir."  Our protagonist, Calum MacLean, is a 29-year old loner who kills people for money. He doesn't want the "security" of working for one of the crime syndicates--he's strictly freelance. But his mentor, who works for the up and coming Peter Jamieson organization, is aging and recently had surgery, so Calum is tapped to do a job taking out someone who has been encroaching on Jamieson's territory, namely Lewis Winter. Seems a simple enough job, but what his new employer fails to tell Calum is that Winter is being backed by a group that wants to challenge Jamieson for territory and business and that this group will take the death of Winter as a challenge that cannot go unanswered. And so the hitman becomes the target. Add to this mix the wily, beautiful, but aging live-in girlfriend of Winter, the corrupt cops in the pockets of the various syndicates, and the lives-for-his-job detective charged with solving the murder of Winter and you have a colorful yet totally believable cast of characters living out their gritty lives in a city with a dark underbelly. I would definitely read the sequels: How a Gunman Says Goodbye, and The Sudden Arrival of Violence. More detail in the reviews from The Guardian, Publishers Weekly. More about Mackay in this interview in The Independent.