Squeaky Clean by Calum McSorley

First published in the UK in 2023; republished by Pushkin Vertigo on June 11, 2024

One of the pleasures of Scottish crime fiction is the challenge of translating dialog into a more familiar form of English. Turning “Wit did ye dae?” into “What did you do?” is simple enough, but longer passages require some effort. Fortunately, translation skills sharpen as the reader gets used to the dialect.

The protagonist is Detective Inspector Alison McCoist, a member of the Major Investigations Team who has been relegated to pursuing trivial investigations as punishment for accusing a man of a vicious murder he didn’t commit. In her defense, the man confessed. In the US, McCoist would get a medal and the police would conveniently overlook evidence that the confession was false.

The false confession protected Paulo McGuinn, a notorious Glaswegian criminal. Other young women have died at his hands, or at the hands of customers of his brothels. Some died in transit to Scotland as they are being trafficked.

The action starts when McGuinn gets his expensive car cleaned at a carwash owned by Sean Prentice. Davey Burnet, a hapless employee of the car wash, borrows the car without permission when he realizes he is late for a family court hearing. He wants to fight for visitation rights and knows he won’t have a chance if he can’t show that he is a responsible person. Sadly for Davey, he isn’t, but he does his best.

On the way to court, thugs working for a man named Croaker ambush the car in an attempt to assassinate McGuinn. Davey is spared only because Croaker realizes the thugs have kidnapped the wrong man. McGuinn, on the other hand, decides that the damage to his car can only be repaid by turning the carwash into one of his criminal enterprises and by making Davey his errand boy.

The plot takes plausible but suprising turns that place Davey in the middle of a war between McGuinn and Croaker. As Davey is drawn more deeply into McGuinn’s world, his thoughts become more frantic. He wants to rehabilitate his relationship with his girlfriend so he can see his daughter, but cleaning up McGuinn’s bloody messes interferes with that goal. He wonders if he can be protected by going to the police before he discovers that police officers are protecting McGuinn. Davey is such a likeable character that his predicament will cause readers to fear for his future.

DI McCoist is another likeable character, although she plays a less important role in the story than Davey. She’s called to the carwash on a couple of occasions and suspects that Davey is caught up in trouble that he can’t handle. She can relate to Davey’s desire to spend time with his daughter. McCoist’s twins live with their father and she can’t seem to connect with them, even when she steals a puppy from a puppy mill during a police raid. She might not be in the right profession, but she gains the reader’s sympathy by mustering the courage to go after McGuire. She gained my sympathy by being good to the puppy.

The tight plot proceeds at a steady pace. The ending is a bit dark, a surprise that gives the story a sense of realism. Even if the characters were less likable, I would have enjoyed Squeaky Clean just for its phonetic rendering of the Glaswegian dialect.

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