Cry Uncle

January 19, 2015
McLean immediately ratchets up the tension in his gritty fifth J. McNee mystery (after 2014’s Mothers of the Disappeared). In the prologue, set in 2012 Dundee, Scotland, PI McNee has drawn a gun on a kneeling David Burns, an aging but still-potent gangster, whom McNee has agreed to help the police bring down. McNee is weighing whether to execute Burns to “gain some kind of justice for all the people caught in his sick pool of self-indulgence and greed.” With the reader in suspense about whether the trigger will be pulled, McLean pulls back eight months. A looming change in the structure of the police makes bringing down Burns an urgent priority for a Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement agent after a decade-long pursuit. McNee is as hard-boiled as they get, and the story of how he got Burns at his mercy will appeal to fans of Denise Mina and Ian Rankin.

January 1, 2015
There's a moment in the old Miami Vice TV series when a female cop, after throwing a friend's friend in the slammer, explains, Cop isn't what I do. It's who I am. The obsessed police in this tough little novel would echo that. Just as their opposite numbers could say that crime isn't just their profession crooks is who they are. The narrator, Scottish PI J. McNee, is working undercover for the Dundee constabulary by hiring on with grandfatherly crime boss David Burns. McNee's handler, Sandy Griggs, is vengeance with a badge. He's convinced that Burns murdered his sister and wants the man dead, not jailed. McNee must function as moral arbiter between these two while trying to stay alive. Unfortunately, the interludes of ethical disquisition slow the text down rather than illuminating it. Shades of grey, one character says, are for people who prefer excuses. Really? Readers shouldn't let this hot air put them off. Justiceor vengeanceis served in fine, well-wrought scenes with plenty of action, and that's what we came for.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)