Close to the Bone by Stuart MacBride

Published in the UK in January 2013; published by HarperCollins on May 14, 2013 

The connection between a body that has been wedged into a tire and set ablaze and a movie called Witchfire being filmed in Aberdeen isn't immediately apparent to Acting Detective Inpector Logan McRae, although the reader knows that the connection must exist or Stuart MacBride wouldn't have included both events in the novel's opening pages. In another apparently unrelated incident, two eighteen-year-olds have gone missing, and while Logan assumes they are lovers who ran away together, his boss makes him investigate to placate the girl's bothersome parents. The reader soon learns that the girl is a big fan of "Harry Bloody Potter, Twilight, and that stupid Witchfire book." Then there are the neighborhood pranksters leaving chicken bones at Logan's front door ... or so he assumes.

About a third of the story has passed before the connections become reasonably clear. The seasoned reader will expect more deaths to follow and will not be disappointed. This is only a wee bit of a whodunit, but the plot does take a surprising twist at the end that will satisfy whodunit fans. Not everything is as it seems, but the various storylines come together in the end. No loose ends are left to dangle.

In a pleasant departure from most police procedurals (and from earlier novels in the McRae series), MacBride doesn't take his characters or his story too seriously. Humor permeates the novel and the tone is nearly always light-hearted despite the serial killings. Logan is often carrying on multiple conversations at once, talking on the phone at the same time he's speaking to investigators at a crime scene, with amusing results. A thug who "looks like someone took a burning cheese grater to his face" comes to Logan's door and punches him in the nose, but the Grampian police not only take their time finding the thug, they don't have much interest in looking for him. Logan's oversexed boss is unreasonably demanding and keen on taking credit for Logan's work. A new detective sergeant named Gertrude Chalmers drives him crazy with her cheery gung-ho attitude and bad driving. A crime boss wants to make Logan the administrator of his will, leaving Logan the task of parceling out his criminal empire. Too many women are telling Logan what to do, one of whom can't even speak. It's no wonder Logan always feels stressed.

Sometimes the characters are slightly over-the-top, but not so far over that I stopped laughing at them. MacBride takes his time developing the plot and the characters, but the pace is never slow. Minor characters have the distinct personalities you'd expect from series regulars, and the beleaguered Logan is easy to like. The novel stands well on its own; it isn't necessary to read the earlier books in the series to get the full flavor of this one.

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Cold Granite by Stuart MacBride

First published in Great Britain in 2005

Cold Granite takes place in the cold, wet, Granite City of Aberdeen. Logan McRae is returning to duty as a detective sergeant with the Grampian Police after spending a year recovering from knife wounds. His first day back greets him with the corpse of a three-year-old child who has been missing for months, a punch in the stomach from the murdered child's distraught grandfather, a scolding from his new boss, and an awkward encounter with his former girlfriend, who is also the medical examiner. McRae's life goes downhill from there. When another child soon turns up missing -- and then dead -- McRae suspects he has a serial killer on his hands.

McRae and his colleagues have a talent for arresting the wrong person, just as Stuart MacBride has a talent for misdirection. The seasoned reader will know that a couple of early suspects must be innocent, simply because too many pages remain when they are arrested. As McRae works his way through the evidence, the usual foes turn up to make his life miserable: a crafty defense attorney, a sneaky reporter, even some ordinary criminals. To sweeten the story, a couple of adults turn up dead, giving the beleaguered McRae even more murders to solve.

Cold Granite is a conventional police procedural, written in a conventional style. The pace is steady and the plot takes a couple of interesting twists, building suspense in fairly predictable ways. Detailed and grizzly descriptions of post-mortem examinations add to the novel's realism, although readers with weak stomachs might want to skip those scenes. The influence of the press on criminal investigations and the ability of reporters to stir a public thirst for vengeance against any possible suspect, regardless of the suspect's guilt or innocence, is the story's strongest theme.

I might have been more enthused about Cold Granite if I had read it before reading the most recent Logan McRae novel,  Close to the Bone. Cold Granite lacks the humor that makes Close to the Bone so enjoyable and therefore suffers by comparison. Granted, the plot's focus on child abduction doesn't lend itself to humor, but MacBride's eventual decision to write a lighter sort of novel was wise. Humor is really his forte.

Cold Granite establishes McRae as a detective who has the misfortunate to be competent, a quality that assures his workload will always be heavier than that of detectives who can't be trusted to catch a criminal if they witness the crime themselves. His personal life is in shambles, in part due to a failed relationship with the medical examiner. There isn't much more to McRae's personality in the first novel of the series, but it's a good starting point.

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