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HEAD SHOT

Quintin Jardine

Headline £18.99 hbk


Review by Calum Macleod




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There is a long-running series of Edinburgh-based police procedurals that continually demonstrate the best the genre has to offer, deservedly garnering awards and nominations along the way. Pity it’s not the series written by Quintin Jardine.

OK, that’s a cheap shot, but by inhabiting the same small city Jardine’s Deputy Chief Constable Bob Skinner performs his duties with the ghostly shade of Dr Rankin OBE peering over his shoulder. Even Jardine’s own publishers acknowledge this on the cover of this, the 12th novel in the series, and the comparison is not to Jardine’s benefit.

Nor does Jardine help himself or his reader by trying to marry two incompatible elements; a US set conspiracy thriller readers will soon twig is connected to THE great 20th century murder, and an Edinburgh police procedural. Moving jarringly between the two, as a a short chapter set in the USA gives way to one set back in Edinburgh, Jardine hardly gives his reader time to adjust to one plot strand before returning them to the other. Clunky dialogue with far too many characters speaking in statements also hampers enjoyment.

It is understandable why Jardine took this approach. Having established his supporting characters over a dozen books, it would be hard to abandon them and Bob Skinner’s absence allows his junior officers a chance to step into the limelight, principally married cops Maggie Rose and Mario McGuire, who find their own families caught up in a murder hunt.

It’s an intriguing enough tale, but too much when linked to Skinner’s own investigation into the savage killing of his parents-in-law and a conspiracy that stretches back to 1960s Washington. This could have made for a book in its own right if Jardine had been bold enough to rest his Edinburgh supporting cast, but in not doing so hobbles his own novel.

And there is an unsatisfying conclusion with the great cop Bob Skinner effectively allowing a murderer to go free. For devotees only, I’m afraid.