Caro Ramsay

Okay, so I'm a more than a bit of a fan of Caro Ramsay for a lot of reasons.  DARK WATER is her third book, featuring a number of ongoing characters, but somehow there's not quite a feeling of a series about these.  If you've not read ABSOLUTION, the first book, that will probably sound a bit odd - but let's just say at the end of that book something I've always thought of as quite brave from an author happens.  The second book SINGING TO THE DEAD has to move on as a result, and again here, we've got a slight switch in the pairings, the characters and the goings on in this book.

We are talking Tartan Noir here - so there is the obligatory setting of dense fog, cold and a series of violent deaths that seem to have all the markings of a serial killer.  There's also a former beauty queen, her mentally ill sister, a rather attractive photographer and his well dodgy assistant and a healthy sprinkling of odd types hanging around the edges.  Adding to the obligatory list is the team being stuffed around by their bosses and all, some romantic tension in the ranks, a rookie who is prepared ot push the boundaries and the required tension within any well functioning police team.

Sounds all very predictable doesn't it.  Luckily in Ramsay's hands there's an edge, a certain something that makes the basic elements of a Tartan Noir police procedural just that little bit better than you'd think.  When I say I'm a bit of a fan - I'm talking a very very big bit.

Caro Ramsay's second book - SINGING TO THE DEAD - has a lot to live up to.  ABSOLUTION was just a fantastic book, with a particularly brave ending.  That ending means SINGING TO THE DEAD starts out looking back to some of that story, and with a need to shift the focus to many of the lesser characters from the first book, as well as introduce new ones.  

The disappearance of two seven-year-old boys starts an investigation which finds itself stretched to the limit when a house fire turns into a full-scale murder hunt as well.  Then another seven-year-old boy disappears and this time it's the son of DI Colin Anderson.

ABSOLUTION was undoubtedly one of my favourite debut books from last year, so SINGING TO THE DEAD was always going to be interesting reading - particularly as I was keen to see if Ramsay would continue to be as bold as she had been first time around.  The start of SINGING TO THE DEAD did seem to be a little unfocused, and there was a rather hefty concentration on the personal aspects of some of the team members - but once a lot of the setup is cleared away, and Ramsay gets down to the core of the investigations the pace picks up markedly.  

Ramsay handles the multiple threads of these investigations - and ultimately - the team members really well.  She also addresses their reactions to the events at the end of ABSOLUTION well, solidly giving the book a sense of history, without dwelling on the past.  I don't think you would have to read the first book to understand events in SINGING TO THE DEAD - it's probably enough to realise that there is history for many of this team and that each of them is reacting to that history in varying ways.  The chacterisations are great, the police procedural aspects of the book solid, and there's a real skill to the way that the various threads are interwoven.  SINGING TO THE DEAD threw me a little at the start, but I ended up liking this as much as I did the author's first book.

ABSOLUTION has two threads. One is the investigation of the murders and the other is following the gradual disintegration of McAlpine's life as the ghosts of his past begin to overwhelm him.

If  there is one criticism, it is that the book seemed to lose just a little momentum towards the end. Then again that just could be me and life getting in the way of reading.

 I don't know what it is about Scotland that produces so many fine crime writers:  Ian Rankin, Val McDermid, Alexander McCall Smith, Christopher Brookmyre, Denise Mina. The list goes on and on. Add Caro Ramsay to that list.  ABSOLUTION is a fine debut novel.  I look forward to more.

ABSOLUTION is the first book from this Scottish author, with the second - Tambourine to be released 2008.  There's obviously something in the water in Scotland - or maybe it's all that time stuck indoors in the long cold winters, but the number of assured, confident books coming out of that place is getting to the startling stage.  ABSOLUTION is definitely assured, with a story-telling style that is absolutely enthralling.

The main component of the book is the hunt for the serial killer - the 'Crucifixion Killer'.  To be honest it's a pretty standard serial killer plot, with a perpetrator that's not difficult to spot, but the point of the book seems less to do with the crime and a whole lot more to do with the impact of crime on the investigators.  McAlpine is a truly tortured soul.  In the 1984 incident, he was already a fragile man, emotionally drained by events in his own family, and with hindsight, what seemed like an easy job - guarding a dreadfully injured, unknown young woman backfired badly.  He becomes so involved in who she is and what happened to her that he is never able to forget, never really recovers.

In the 2006 investigation, his personal fragility is starting to get on top of him - badly.  As his team continue the investigation, and try, out of friendship for him and genuine feeling for his wife; to continue the investigation, to compensate for McAlpine; to understand - he falls apart in front of them.  His behaviour becomes more and more erratic, his distress less and less controlled.

And it's impact of crime that becomes the main point of ABSOLUTION.  The serial killer has victims - those victims have friends and families and associates.  And victims aren't necessarily good, or nice, or as ideal as people perhaps think.   And investigators can sometimes become victims as well.  Whether that's psychological or physical, well we've all seen what happens when investigators put themselves into jeopardy.  Only in ABSOLUTION the jeopardy is not what you think, and whilst it might not be hard to work out where the past has leaked into the present, it sometimes ends in ways that you may not expect.