In Nomine Patris

Johnston is a proxy killer (Patris: the Father) who uses crime families to kill on his behalf (In Nomine: in the name of). Rooney is failed forensic profiler, who gets one more chance; however, given his own conflicts, can he rise to this challenge which will change or destroy his life? Jackie is a perversely ambitious cop, not above murder in her own right. She gives Rooney the chance, but why? Muir is a Machiavellian civic leader who is the focus of the proxy killer’s psychosis.
Mental illness, alcohol abuse and the tedium of pursuing typical killers, leave Rooney (Sean) a pathetic man, a failed forensic profiler, a bit of a loser. Faced with a multiple murderer, his friend DCI Kaminski (Jackie), induces him from his decrepitude with the possibility that this one might be a proxy killer that would draw him back into the fray. His interest in man’s ability to kill his fellows, that he may be one who manipulates, controls, and exploits others to do the dirty deed, draws Rooney out of ‘retirement’.
Rooney, however, becomes one of the controlled, and is faced with an impossible dilemma: kill this fiend, as the killer’s last act of control or his best friend, a great artist, will die. Can he, Rooney, a good man, kill a man, albeit a monster; thereby, confirming for him that everyone can be controlled, used, made to kill? Dostoevsky’s man was a bad man who kills and finds his conscience; our man Rooney is a good man with a conscience who has to overcome this to kill. The novel weaves together the juxtaposition of Rooney internal conflicts with the psychopath’s pursuit of domination, destruction and death. The subtext of the novel is that everyone is corruptible; and, faced with certain circumstances, we can do bad things.
Latin signatures, e.g. In Nomine Patris (the Father’s) link the psychopath with an ancestor, a prestigious Scot’s Latin poet, cruelly abused by the Lord Provost of Glasgow’s ancestor, provides something of the who and the why; indigenous crime families, fearful of migrant gangs taking over their criminal territory, provide the what; the means to control and manipulate is the how; the dark, gothic setting of Glasgow provides the where; where in Rooney’s words, ‘everything, including multiple murder, corruption and mayhem, has a way of being treated as normal’ All together, makes this a gripping psychological thriller, with all of the ‘dunnits’.
The initial chapters tempt the reader with a sense of catastrophe, defining the characters, and the gothic gritty backdrop of Glasgow’s underworld, pubs and politics. More twists than Lombard Street propel the reader towards a dramatic, yet incredible political drama by the middle of the book, and, enjoying a break from death, destruction and depravity, the final chapters enjoy a psychological battle between Johnston and Rooney: a complex double bind and a great character changing conflict, which leads to the proxy killer’s denouement, defining Rooney and morphing him into something quite unexpected. Three main phases characterise the protagonist and the novel: (a) Rooney is being used (he has always done the right thing); (b) Rooney has a life changing epiphany (a drunk looking at himself through a bottle); and (c) Rooney undergoes a dramatic transformation (Mr Nice Guy becomes Mr Proxy Killer himself, i.e. ‘The Father’: heir apparent?).