If you take MacBride’s work seriously Aberdeen has a major crime problem. And not just ordinary crime either. In MacBride’s world Aberdeen is in the constant grip of the most macabre and gruesome crime wave the human mind can imagine.
Thankfully, MacBride is not meant to be taken seriously. Aberdeen isn’t as bad as he portrays, and there is a humour to his novels that other crime fiction avoids, which indicates the author knows his work isn’t meant to be taken literally.
In his novels, MacBride follows well trodden enough crime conventions, although “Blind Eye” is noticeable for being more ambitious than his earliest novels, a process that started with “Flesh House.” Such is the ambition that the protagonist, Logan McRae, even gets a wee trip abroad.
The convention MacBride follows is thus: Gruesome Crime – Investigation by over worked police – plot leads to a suspect – somebody else is subsequently guilty, and they get caught eventually. All the while the reader follows Logan McRae navigate the investigation, police politics and a complicated social life, with varying degrees of success and failure.
A welcome relief from Rankin’s Rebus novels, MacBride’s work is entertaining enough, though it is not convention busting, whilst being steady and consistent. Just be thankful it isn’t real life. Even the weather in Aberdeen is better than MacBride makes out. This book gets 3/5.
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