The last witness

While we were in England recently one of the members of our group gave me a copy of the book, The last witness, by Denzil Meyrick. This is the second in a series of books about D C I Jim Daley. I had not come across this author before and when I checked catalogues for two Australian libraries  I discovered that one had two books in the series as e-books while the other had some of the titles as paperbacks or e-books.

The book falls into the category of Scottish crime novels known as Tartan Noir. Earlier this year Val McDermid wrote an article in Crimereads, On the Remarkable Rise of Tartan Noir. These books cover the gritty world of crime in Scotland and the speech of the characters is in the local dialect.

In this book a crime is committed in Ringwood, Victoria, Australia, resulting in the murder of a husband and wife who left Scotland to take on a new identity and lifestyle. The murderer left a calling card revealing that he is a crime lord who died five years previously. Other murders of people previously associated with the crime lord begin to occur near the town of Kinloch and it soon becomes obvious that people involved in his arrest and trial, including the police, are now targets.

The story is revealed through the viewpoint and thoughts of a number of the characters. This is a fast moving action crime novel and as the plot progresses we learn the back story of many of the characters.