Review: The Heretic by Liam McIlvanney

Synopsis: From the award-winning author comes a much-anticipated sequel to the Scottish Crime Book of the Year The Quaker …

Glasgow 1975

A deadly fire

An arson attack on a Glasgow warehouse causes the deaths of a young mother and child. Police suspect it’s the latest act in a brutal gang warfare that’s tearing the city apart – one that DI Duncan McCormack has been tasked with stopping.

A brutal murder

Five years ago he was walking on water as the cop who tracked down a notorious serial killer. But he made powerful enemies and when a mutilated body is found in a Tradeston slum, McCormack is assigned a case that no one wants. The dead man is wearing a masonic ring, though, and Duncan realizes the victim is not the down-and-out his boss had first assumed.

A catastrophic explosion

As McCormack looks into both crimes, the investigations are disrupted by a shocking event. A bomb rips through a pub packed with people – and a cop is killed in the blast. The cases are stacking up and with one of his own unit now dead, McCormack is in the firing line.

But he’s starting to see a thread – one that connects all three attacks…

Following on from "The Quaker", "The Heretic" sees DI Duncan McCormack return from London back to the Serious Crime Squad based at Temple Police Station. He is not a welcome figure, despite having caught two serial killers, one of which was a serving police officer; his colleagues are quick to label his a "grass" and a "scab"; he is not a local so will always be considered an outsider.

However, McCormack's prime target is local crime boss Walter Maitland, who seems to be made from teflon, as nothing sticks This raises questions as to why Maitland is always one step ahead of the police - is the game rigged?. At the height of the "cleansing workers" strike, a vagrant is brutally murdered and left, with no identification, amongst the piles of garbage (trash), in the hopes of not being immediately found. McCormack is quickly taken off the Maitaland case and handed the less glamourous murder by his boss, DCI Haddow, who hates McCormack with a passion.

Crime has spread its tentacles, like a giant octopus, into all facets of local life, so that solving one unremarkable murder will take McCormack and his team full circle and back to their main quarry. Many seemingly unrelated threads are slowly woven together to form a cohesive, yet disturbing outcome.

McIlvanney's narrative is as gritty as the landscape itself: all the violence, social and religious prejudices and sectarianism of the time are to be found here. His characters display all the complexities and foibles of humanity: flawed, corrupt, ambitious, fragile, human.

Image by Nick Hedges

The 1970s and early 1980s were dark periods as steelworks, coal mines, engine factories and other heavy industries went out of business, leading to mass de-industrialisation. This led to mass unemployment and high levels of urban decay, with great swathes of derelict and contaminated land. The tenement housing on the peripheral had been built quickly, cheaply and with few amenities, and at length became run down and by the mid-70s were slums that could put Victorian England to shame. The streets were granite-setted, noisy, but solid; the population tightly packed in apartments that are mostly small, dark and dirty. Poor social housing, high levels of unemployment and poverty and the lack of social mobility scarred the landscape.

McCormack is heard to remark that "..... crime rises, like the bloody heat ..".  Strathclyde Police was the territorial police force which formed as a result of the amalgamation of eight regional police forces in 1975. Crime was mostly gang related and insular - as former head of Strathclyde's Serious Crime Squad, Joe Jackson relates:

"They only worked with the guys from their area and it was very hard to break into that. We could always get some people who would be grasses and we could work on that, plus there would be decent people in the areas who would help us build a picture of who was in the gangs and who was associated with them. But it was a tough game."

The Sex Discrimination Act of 1975 finally enabled women to be recruited on the same terms and conditions as men. Women were finally incorporated into the same line management structures, undertaking similar work to their male colleagues, for the first time. Up to this period, female officers could only join as part of a "completely separate" unit known as the Policewomen's Department which was seen as a "support" for male officers, remaining in the office, doing the admin work, and up to 1968, forced to retire when they were married. Nevertheless challenges remained in relation to cultural attitudes and equal representation - read more in this 2017 interview with retired Detective Chief Inspector Nanette Pollock in The Herald.

McIlvanney, as I have mentioned, has nailed the time period, and despite multiple references, I would definitely recommend reading "The Quaker" first. Looking forward to reading more.