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Jump to navigationJump to searchDust to Dust (Steven Dunbar) by Ken McClure (view source)
Revision as of 19:44, 29 August 2020
, 19:44, 29 August 2020no edit summary
This is when things get really complex and complicated. Agencies and individuals seem to have their own preferred outcome. Into the fray steps Dr Dunbar (hero of the novel) to get things back on track and brought to a speedy and satisfactory conclusion. But does he? McClure has great fun with the reader, pulling this way, then that way, all in the name of a good old yarn. The dialogue is natural and fluid. Very easy to read.
There's are a few sub-plots within the main plot and Dunbar is seen charging up and down the M1. One day to a hastily -convened meeting in London then back to the relative calm and beauty of the Borders. But the net appears to be closing in. McClure gives us likable likeable characters throughout. It's all entertaining, page-turning stuff. McClure shares other parts of Scotland with the reader, such as gritty Glasgow. We're taken round the poverty-ridden East End and McClure paints a depressing picture. He embellishes it further with a splattering of characters speaking in the broad Glasgow dialect. Colourful writing which adds another dimension. Tends to sit uneasily though with the dreaming spires of Oxford and the better postcodes of London.
We're also given a potted history of Dunbar and his illustrious career to date. I sense a bit of a thread with previous Dunbar novels but this is the first that I've read and it's certainly a stand-alone novel in its own right. When knee-deep in clues there's a great line where Dunbar shares a favourite adage with a colleague which is '' Two can keep a secret if one of them is dead.'' This is a novel in the good old-fashioned tradition of storytelling, albeit set very much in modern times. I would happily read the other books in the series. I gobbled this one up in two sittings. Thoroughly enjoyable.
