Craig Russell - Lennox

LENNOX

Craig Russell served for several years as a police officer in Scotland, before becoming an advertising copywriter and later a creative director. He has been a full-time novelist since 2004. His Hamburg-based crime series featuring Jan Fabel has sold worldwide and is due to appear on German-language television. His first thriller in this series, Lennox, was published to widespread acclaim. Craig has been shortlisted for the Duncan Lawrie Dagger Award and has won the CWA Dagger in the Library. He lives in Perthshire, Scotland.

You cant get much more noir than 1950s Glasgow Russell makes excellent use of all the hardboiled conventions: wisecracking voice, Tom and Jerry violence, Neanderthal minders, cynical molls and the like atmospheric, deftly plotted and especially good on Glaswegian insularity. Lennox is a gripping start to what promises to be a great series.

Guardian

Lennox is a crime story that transcends the genre. Craig Russell brilliantly uses the character of his tough, funny and hopeful man Lennox to give us the eyes and ears on a time and place. This is storytelling at its very best!

Michael Connelly

Tautly plotted. Lennox is full of wisecracking narration, Neanderthal henchmen, and cynical femme fatales but Russell rises far beyond copycatting or clich with his unique storytelling, dark humour, and his intelligent and complex protagonist, as well as his ability to weave a wonderful sense of Glaswegian atmosphere gripping, memorable and highly recommended, I look forward to the second instalment.

Euro Crime

Lennox is a private eye for the ages tough, uncompromising and insightful, with concrete fists and a heart of gold. Russell has brilliantly captured post-war Glasgow and the vulnerability of those left to pick up the pieces.

Michael Robotham

The voice is hard, the gaze cinematic, and the result is a nod to film noir. Classic crime conventions are in safe hands Lennox is impressive in his very familiarity, while the plot twists and turns the readers expectations on its own. An extremely polished debut for the new series, it will be interesting to see where Lennoxs case-book takes him next.

The Scotsman

Also by Craig Russell

The Jan Fabel series:
Blood Eagle
Brother Grimm
Eternal
The Carnival Master
The Valkyrie Song

CRAIG RUSSELL

First published in Great Britain in 2009 by Quercus
This paperback edition first published in 2010 by

Quercus
21 Bloomsbury Square
London
WC1A 2NS

Copyright 2009 By Craig Russell

The moral right of Craig Russell to be
identified as the author of this work has been
asserted in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication
may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopy, recording, or any
information storage and retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publisher.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 84724 967 8

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters,
businesses, organizations, places and events are
either the product of the authors imagination
or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to
actual persons, living or dead, events or
locales is entirely coincidental.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Typeset by Ellipsis Books Limited, Glasgow

Printed and Bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc

For Colin

In my life, I have had to explain my way out of a lot of tight corners, but this tops them all.

I am leaning against the wall of an upper-storey room in an empty dockside warehouse. I am leaning against the wall because I doubt if I can stand up without support. I am trying to work out if there are any vital organs in the lower left of my abdomen, just above the hip. I try to remember anatomy diagrams from every encyclopaedia I ever opened as a kid because, if there are vital organs down there, I am pretty much fucked.

I am leaning against a wall in an empty dockside warehouse trying to remember anatomy diagrams and there is a woman on the floor, about three yards in front of me. I dont need to remember childhood encyclopaedias to know that there is a pretty vital organ in your skull, not that I seem to have made much use of it over the last four weeks. Anyway, the woman on the floor hasnt got much of a skull left, and no face at all. Which is a shame, because it was a beautiful face. A truly beautiful face. Next to the woman without her face is a large canvas bag that has been dropped onto the grubby floor, spilling half of its contents, which comprise a ridiculously large quantity of used, large-denomination banknotes.

I am leaning against a wall in an empty dockside warehouse with a hole in my side trying to remember anatomy diagrams, while a dead woman without her beautiful face and a large bag of cash lie on the floor. That should be enough of a pickle to be in, but there is also a large bear of a man looking down at the girl, the bag and now, at me. And he is holding a shotgun: the same one that took her face off.

I have been in better situations.

I think I need to explain.

Four weeks and a day ago, I didnt know Frankie McGahern. I also didnt know that this was a state of affairs much to be desired. My life was, admittedly, not without its ups and, more often, downs, and I knew a lot of people that others would cross the street to avoid, but Frankie McGahern was a bright star that was yet to cross my sky.

I knew the name McGahern, of course. Frankie was one of a matching pair: the McGahern Twins. I had heard of Tam, Frankies older brother by three minutes, who was a well-known middleweight gangster in Glasgow, one of those whom the big guys left alone, mainly because it was more trouble than it was worth.

The funny thing about the McGahern Twins depending on how you define funny is that although they were outwardly identical, the similarity ended there. Unlike his brother, Tam was smart, hard and truly dangerous. And he was a life-taker. The viciousness he had learned in the back streets and closes of Clydebank had been professionally honed during the war in North Africa and the Middle East. Tam the alley rat had become a decorated Desert Rat.

Frankie, on the other hand, had evaded military service courtesy of a dodgy lung. While Tam had been away on active service, his less capable brother had been left in charge of the McGahern business. Frankies nose had been put out of joint when Tam took back full control on his return from the Middle East. With Tams brains behind it once more, the little McGahern empire began to grow again.

But while the McGahern operation wasnt to be sneezed at, it didnt make much of an impact on the Three Kings: the triumvirate of Glasgow crime bosses who controlled almost everything that went on in the city. And who provided, between them, a fair amount of my workload. The Three Kings set the limits for Tam McGahern but other than that left him and his brother alone. Tam was more than a sleeping dog they let lie: he was an evil, rabid, vicious psycho of a dog that they let lie. But on a short chain.

Until eight weeks and two days ago.

Eight weeks and two days ago, Tam McGahern was spending the evening in a grubby flat above a bar in Maryhill servicing a nineteen-year-old girl, no doubt with the direct, no-nonsense disregard for finesse that has made Scotsmen the envy of every Latin lover. McGahern owned the bar below, and, to all intents and purposes, the girl above as well.