Undiscovered Scotland

 

"Tag - You're Dead" by Douglas Skelton is a thoroughly gripping whodunit that shows just how darkly humorous Tartan Noir can become: and how genuinely chilling it can be at the same time. It marks the author's second outing for his memorably-named protagonist Dominic Queste, a wisecracking private investigator - of sorts - with a shady past as a failed journalist and drug-addict. We thoroughly enjoyed the first book in the series, "The Dead Don't Boogie" and in our review concluded that "we look forward to his next outing in what promises to be an extremely good series of novels." It turned out that we didn't have too long to wait, and it's nice to be able to report that the second book in the series takes the author's work to another level entirely.

There are a number of reasons why "Tag - You're Dead" stands head and shoulders above its (already very good) predecessor. The first is that the author and his protagonist have come to a more comfortable accommodation with one another. Dominic Queste is a man who interprets events in terms of his encyclopedic knowledge of the films he's seen, and who responds to those events by channelling the persona of the archetypal wisecracking private detective we all half-remember from black and white films starring Humphrey Bogart. The second is the way a storyline that is far from straightforward is interpreted so deftly for the reader. There are layers of complexity here, but they always remain entertaining and never become mystifying or frustrating. Without doubt, however, the best thing about this book is the way it succeeds in ensuring that the deepest of the levels of the plot generates a real level of horror, which then increasingly pervades every aspect of the book.

The starting point of the story is straightforward enough. "I find it hard to refuse an attractive woman when she asks for a favour. I find it damn near impossible when we're both naked." Dominic is asked by his attractive friend Ginty O'Reilly to help find her cousin, Sam Price, a prize-winning butcher who has gone missing. Dominic agrees to help, and soon finds himself caught up in a complex web in which some of Glasgow's most suspicious police are competing with some of the city's most ruthless gangsters to find out what became of Price, who even his cousin Ginty had described as "dodgy". And both groups think that Dominic knows much more than he is telling them. He does, but not nearly enough. Not to begin with, anyway. Some inspired detective work lead Dominic and Ginty to a horrifying discovery in Highland Perthshire: then Dominic finds a mobile phone in his flat that doesn't belong to him, and events begin to take a genuinely creepy turn...