In Place of Death – A Great Glasgow Crime Thriller

In Place of Death is the latest Glasgow Crime Thriller from Craig Robertson, shining a light in to the darkest parts of Glasgow. This is an excellent police procedural thriller that has a fantastic dynamic between the two leading characters DI Rachel Narey and crime scene photographer Tony Wilson. There are some fantastic lines that Robertson uses to illustrate characters that just make you smile and think he has that spot on.

With the reorganisation of the Police in Scotland and the creation of Police Scotland, Rachel Narey has just been promoted to a detective inspector in the major incident team that covers Glasgow. Her promotion will have earnt her plenty of snide comments as well as enemies; Narey not only has to battle the criminals but the sexism within her own force.

Tony Wilson is a police photographer specialist, who has managed to hang on to his job in the reorganisation of Police Scotland. Again like Narey he has enemies and his line manager is the man that wants him gone in a heartbeat. All this is complicated by the fact that Wilson also happens to be dating Rachel Narey.

A body is found in the Molendinar Burn and it looks like he has been there for a while, taking the pictures Wilson is shaken as he may know the victim. Later another body is found in the Odeon in central Glasgow, there seems to be no connection other than the bodies are hidden in places where nobody is ever expected to find them.

The investigation takes Narey too many places that she wishes it did not; leads take her to the Rosewood Hotel, a hostel for the homeless, more like a waiting room for the grim reaper to Urbexing via the notorious Mullen crime family. She finds that people want her to fail so they can point to the fact is she is female and was only promoted for that reason.

At the same time Winter re-enters a world he thought he had left behind years ago, when he too used to enjoy urbexing across Glasgow. As he gets further back in to the urbexing world he seems to place himself in the way of danger while at the same time crossing the line in to the Police investigation.

As the investigation heads towards a conclusion there are some wonderful twists towards the end that you do not see coming. There are some interesting turns within the body of the thriller that help to give the characters depth and make them seem more human.

This is an excellent crime thriller and Craig Robertson is going from strength to strength and this new series will get even better as the characters develop and we get to examine the dark underbelly of Glasgow. ( )