To The Last Page

Crime novels are not usually all that complicated or nuanced. In many cases someone is killing people, a police detective is called in to investigate, solve the mystery and try to prevent more deaths; there are good guys and bad guys. Things are never so simple in M.R. Mackenzie's Anna Scavolini series of books, which is appropriate as she is a lecturer in criminology at University of Glasgow and it's a vast subject. And she is a lecturer, not a police detective or investigator. Yet crime affects everyone and has a wider impact on society, and that is something we continually find in Mackenzie's writing. That and the guarantee of a rattling good crime thriller, and he provides that again, page after page, in The Shadow Men . Mackenzie certainly doesn't take any easy route in the crimes he covers in his work. In Cruel Summer , the second Anna Scavolini book, he hinted at crimes of corruption and abuse that extend beyond the traditional underground gangland...