Parallel Lines: The Glasgow Supremacy — R.J. Mitchell

They call Scottish crime fiction 'tartan noir' -- and if that's the case, then the thread of red that runs through Parallel Lines is a river of blood, and the blacks and greens are the bruises on a battered corpse. This book doesn't pull any punches in its depiction of a deadly cops-and-robbers feud that strays far beyond the procedural into the personal. At the core of the story is a traditional love triangle -- the hero, the villain and the girl that gets between them -- but it's Mitchell's first-hand knowledge of what goes on behind the police station's closed doors that sets the book apart. This is a real page-turner: once that plot is set in motion, like a car with its brake pipes cut hurtling down a steep Glasgow street -- and that's an image from the book you won't forget -- it carries the reader right through to its bullet-strewn climax." ALAN MORRISON, Group Arts Editor, Herald & Times