Set in the Scottish Borders, Marten Claridge's mean streets may not be those of grim procedurals set in dreich innercities populated by a relentless parade of hard-talking hardons but that doesn't mean his quiet Border lanes don't shudder with a violence spawned in the shadows of our worst urban nightmares. Mean streets wear many guises but the motives for murder never change. Brother Lox Lennox puts it another way:
"Not all our righteous paths are paved with the bodies of those who stand in our way."
But then Lennox is no ordinary monk. Ex SAS and with a bullet still lodged in his skull, his convoluted past is a minefield of contradictions best avoided in the sanctuary of the cloisters. He fought subversive wars in the Middle East the papers never got to hear about. In the 80s he infiltrated the Scottish Revolutionary Army and on behalf of his shadowy masters raised the spectre of Tartan Terrorism to a whole new lethal level. But good times never last, and when the betrayer became the betrayed he returned to his native Borders and like many a reiver before him went into hiding.
But mad dogs don't retire, they just tread more lightly and learn to hunt at night. Which just happens to suit those shadowy masters who now find themselves stepping into the political limelight... because there's always a need for a man with Lox's deadly skills.
Lennox, though, is never predictable. Caught in the crossfire between old allegiances he is brutally forced to question and the convoluted twists and turns of a strange new conscience, he suddenly realises he is not just a pawn but the pivotal player in a game of mortal consequences he is perfectly positioned to win. But redemption, he finds, comes with a heavy price.
Criminal Borders
Conspiracy theorist and radical angler Robbie Veitch believes a cartel of local riparian landowners are planning to restock Tweed's dwindling resources with genetically-engineered salmon guaranteed to put the Borders back on the angling map. His only problem is that no one believes him... until the bodies start to fall.
Although very much a contemporary crime novel, this is also the timeless story of the moral feud between tradition and progress, where conservation and exploitation battle it out in a Borders community suckled on bloodfeud and centuries of internecine conflict that still spills blood to this day.
Duncan Ker found out the hard way that in some quarters tradition is a halter round the neck of progress in the hands of gutless fools: in fact he had to escape abroad to free himself from the chains of a bloodfeud forged in far more desperate times. But now that a murderous attempt has left his brother comatose, Duncan is forced to return and face the demons that drove him away.
Jolted from an ex-pat existence without purpose or meaning, and with corporate wolves at the castle gates intent on the annihilation of everything he cherishes, he finds himself confronted and ultimately converted by values and passions that run as deep as his blood.
Still Waters
Primo Percowitz is one of those hungry wolves at the castle gates. He made his fortune as a sausage-maker but now he's tired of running Edinburgh's most exclusive sex-club and wants to retire to the country. Like all greedy men of limitless wants, he wants a castle and he wants it now, and he doesn't care how he gets it.
When pitted against the values of a new millenium that espouses short term profit above all else, Duncan Ker's understanding of what is ultimately right and just is deepened not only by his own personal journey into a past brought vividly to life by his grandfather Ranal and the ancestral memories that shadow every aspect of his childhood, but also by the hesitant relationship he develops with the enigmatic and abrasive Kirsten Malkin.
Lady Malkin is no delicate wallflower, no matter how much her abusive husband demands her to be. And while she may appear to be part of the opposing camp, her longstanding friendship with the comatose Euan belies still waters that run very deep indeed.
For, much like Lox Lennox, Kirsten has paid a heavy price for the anarchic mistakes of her youth and her arranged marriage to the despicable Lord Malkin is the costliest mistake of all. For seven years she has succumbed to his violence and neurotic need to repress and control her using all the resources of his government-funded security company, but now backed into a moral corner by Malkin's increasing cruelty and megalomania, Kirsten also reaches a tipping point where she must finally make a stand for a future she ardently believes in.
Strange Fish
Who is Fin? An enigmatic eco-warrior intent on highlighting the feudal inequities of the nation's riparian fishing rights? Or a solitary subaquaean soldier harassing Tweed's most exclusive syndicated beats for financial gain? And is Fin really responsible for the bomb which devastates the public angling meeting and takes two innocent lives? One thing is certain, lurking beneath the surface in a rubber-suit and scuba gear, Fin is definitely the strangest fish abroad.
Finely crafted and meticulously researched, Bad Bullet Day's intricately woven plot is as wild as the borderlands whose very nature, both historic and literal, plays as much a rebellious part in the story's outcome as its unique central characters.
