A new thriller from Edinburgh-based author, Wilson Smillie, debuted today on Amazon.co.uk and its sister platform Amazon.com in e-book and paperback formats. Featuring a new character, Detective Sergeant Lachlan Carter, known to his close friends, colleagues and readers as Leccy.
Based in the St Leonard’s neighbourhood of Edinburgh, Leccy’s debut is a very personal one. The opening shows us the funeral of his wife, Kelsa. The action begins in the first chapter when Leccy’s grief for his young wife overflows, and suddenly he’s in the grave lying on top of her coffin. Did he fall, or was he pushed? You’ll have to read the story to find out.
This is not Smillie’s first novel, but it’s his first attempt at writing a modern British detective story, and he couldn’t have placed it anywhere else but in the old-new city of Edinburgh. Chasing the ghosts of other fictional investigators, some with fearsome reputations for pounding the shoe-leather in the less salubrious neighbourhoods in the city, was not his intention. The gruesome tenements of Muirhouse and Niddrie are long gone, but Edinburgh’s reputation as a town of “fur coat and nae knickers” lives on.
Leccy is a thirty-three-year-old sergeant. Young for a detective in a genre that likes its heroes to be hard-bitten and middle-aged, with sagging pale faces, grey hair and retirement are primary concerns. And that’s just the women. When I caught up with him before the book launch, he made it clear that he wanted to wipe the fictional slate clean in the same way the city fathers have achieved with the social regeneration of many of the city’s old neighbourhoods.
‘Policing today isn’t “The Sweeny” with hardboiled coppers putting the crims in hospital before they’re dragged into jail for life,’ he told me. ‘Modern policing is very “procedural”, to the point where there is no drama left in the Job. The rise of mobile phones for everyone means the police can get most of the evidence they need to convict from a suspect’s handset. Where is the suspense in that? Well, I decided to turn the tables on Leccy by giving him a stalker who knew more about mobile phone tracking than he did. And without giving anything away, Leccy is taken to the very edge of his tether by his nemesis.’
It’s hard to achieve national recognition these days writing police stories, but Smillie says Leccy will have a decent run if readers like his writing style and care enough to invest in the character by buying his stories.
Your Fictional Crime Reporter