The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter
-
-
3.6 • 16 Ratings
-
-
- £4.99
Publisher Description
Winner of the ITV3 Crime Thriller Book Club Best Read Award.
Shortlisted for the CWA John Creasey Dagger for Best Debut Crime Novel of the Year and the Saltire Scottish First Book of the Year Award.
Longlisted for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger for Best Thriller of the Year and the Theakston's Crime Novel of the Year Award.
A twenty-nine-year-old man lives alone in his Glasgow flat. The telephone rings; a casual conversation, but behind this a job offer. The clues are there if you know to look for them.
He is an expert. A loner. Freelance. Another job is another job, but what if this organization wants more?
A meeting at a club. An offer. A brief. A target: Lewis Winter.
It's hard to kill a man well. People who do it well know this. People who do it badly find out the hard way. The hard way has consequences.
An arresting, gripping novel of dark relationships and even darker moralities, The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter introduces a remarkable voice in crime fiction.
Malcolm Mackay's award-winning The Glasgow Trilogy continues in How A Gunman Says Goodbye and The Sudden Arrival of Violence.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
British author Mackay makes his U.S. debut with the dark first in his Glasgow trilogy. A powerful Glasgow boss, Peter Jamieson, hires Calum MacLean, a freelance hit man, to take out Lewis Winter, a smalltime drug dealer who has stepped on some dangerous toes. While 29-year-old Calum is a familiar type, a tough loner with few meaningful human connections, Mackay makes him oddly sympathetic. All the characters, from a police detective investigating a murder to Winter's opportunistic girlfriend, come across as three-dimensional. The author also does a good job de-romanticizing the life of the hit man, capturing the dullness of Calum's days as he goes through his preparations for the job. Understated dialogue shows that the characters know how to read what is not said, as well as what is said. Mackay doesn't break any new ground, but tartan noir fans will be satisfied.
Customer Reviews
No too many adverbs
The author has read and learned from the great writers of hard-boiled crime stories; few words are wasted and adverbs and adjectives largely missing from this thriller. It is quite strong meat but well plotted and introduces a few interesting characters about whom a reader wants to know more.
My only reservation is that although said to be set in Glasgow it has no feel or smell of that city and even the language does not feel familiar, you don't have to be James Kelman to salt your dialogue with the the rhythms and hardened wit of Glasgow's streets.