A superior thriller, this, one of the best I've come across in a while. Like Ian Rankin, Lindsay lives in Edinburgh, and his protagonist, Detective Inspector Jim Meldrum, is just as astringent in his outlook as Rankin's John Rebus. A man in early middle age, Meldrum has had to claw his way up the police ladder after an inauspicious start, and when we meet him in this episode he is out of favour because of his championing of the innocence - as he believes - of a convicted murderer.
Once married to Carole - with whom he still enjoys cosy fireside chats - he is now in an uneasy liaison with alcoholic lawyer Harriet. His relationship with his Sergeant, an ambitious younger man named Henderson, also leaves a lot to be desired. So it is obvious that Meldrum, even before the plot kicks off, has a lot on his plate.
The case is concerned with the disappearance of well-to-do businessman John Bellman, who took off on the night of his daughter's 21st birthday party and hasn't been seen since. Meldrum is a little surprised at the interest shown by his superiors in the episode; he sees the event as a middle-aged man leaving a boring household to dally with a younger woman. Then he meets the members of Bellman's family and begins to readjust his ideas. The wife, Willa, is the daughter of General Seton Gordon Gardiner, a career soldier who appears to wield much influence in the corridors of power in Scotland. There are also two sons, accountant Gordon and ex-soldier Alistair, and the daughter, student Ruth. The thing that sets Meldrum's suspicions ticking is that none of them shows much concern at the fact of Bellman's disappearance.
Lindsay's use of splintered prose to drive his story along is most effective in maintaining his slightly out-of-focus atmosphere. Because he doesn't go in for a lot of explanations of his characters' motives and movements, more than the usual attention is called for on the part of the reader. And Meldrum's prickly rubbing-people-up-the-wrong-way method of investigating doesn't make for a smooth narrative thrust either.
Rather than detracting from the quality of the book, however, all the foregoing adds to its interest. Having to put that extra bit of effort into working out what is going on gives a zest to the experience of reading, something that is lacking in many of the genre's offerings in what is becoming an over-stocked market.
In the event, Meldrum plods stickily on, in the process unearthing a worldwide conspiracy by a group of power-mad fascists, while also poking out evil on his own home patch. He travels to Oslo to meet his counterpart there, an equally taciturn Norwegian, Tore Braaten, and the encounter between them turns into an episode of black humour, with both of them being reticent to the point of an echoing, Beckettian silence.
Bellman's body eventually turns up, entangled in chains and immersed in a dank pool near his home. Then in quick succession a couple of other murders are committed - Bellman's partner, a Norwegian named Kielland, is found shot to death at the bottom of a ski lift, while an Italian called Locascio is knifed almost under the nose of Braaten. It turns out that these men, along with Bellman, had been stealing from the fascist group, and that the members, in their turn, had set a killer called the Hunter on their trail.
Not a terribly original plot, it is true, but this is only the icing on the cake, with the real richness to be found inside. Lindsay is a master at catching the small detail and giving it a shining lustre that may or may not turn out to be fool's gold. He tantalises with the nuts and bolts, while building the real creation behind the reader's back. I'm now off in search of the other Jim Meldrum novel, Kissing Judas.
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