Bitter Water - by Gordon Ferris
There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries.
Shakespeare
Gordon Ferris’s last outing with his post-WWII Glasgow journalist protagonist, Douglas Brodie, went viral over at Kindle, and for good reason. An interesting character in an interesting place, tackling interesting ideas, Ferris proved he was more than just a by-the-numbers hack cranking out the tartan noir formula. He showed himself a writer capable of smoothly examining themes a literary author would struggle with, and carrying his readers along with him without a hint of “worthiness”. He tries the same tack with this new outing for Brodie, but while the talent still shows through, I didn’t find it as fulfilling as the previous effort.
In this one, set some months after the events of The Hanging Shed, ex-soldier and former police officer Brodie is back permanently in his native Glasgow, employed as junior crime reporter on the Glasgow Gazette, the kind of scummy crusader which the yellow press doesn’t produce anymore. Understudying old Glasgow crime hand Wullie McAllister, Brodie is called out to a derelict warehouse where the local constabulary have discovered the body of Councillor Alec Morton, a big wheel in the city’s post-war regeneration project, who is discovered hanging upside down with his head encased in a bucket of hardened cement.
It’s a promising start for a crime story, but Brodie doesn’t have much time to ponder Morton’s demise before the city is engulfed in the activities of the Glasgow Marshalls, a troop of vigilantes with a downer on the city’s corruption and vice, and also, for some reason, an interest in Brodie. With Wullie following the Morton investigation, Brodie is left to concentrate of the Marshalls, who are building up quite a following in a city tired of crime and official corruption. When the investigation points to nefarious dealings in the council chamber, the Marshalls appear red-hot favourites for Morton’s shampoo and set, but as ever with a good crime story (and it is actually quite good) it’s not that simple.
If there is one quality which distinguishes Tartan Noir from the more plot-driven efforts of English crime writers, it’s the thematic nature of the Scottish genre. In the last Brodie novel, the themes ware character and war. World War Two was the last act of a three act play that began in 1870 and was not finally and definitively over until 1945. At the end, a new Europe rose from the ashes, something that should have happened in 1918, but for whatever reason, did not, and it took a whole new generation - Brodie’s generation - to birth the new. That war was the seminal conflict not just of Brodie’s generation, but of every generation which has come after, and it continues to fascinate us today.
World War II changed an entire nation, an entire generation. But what if you missed it? Whole countries, joined in the kind of unified effort seen only once a millennium, producing men like Brodie, heroes who find themselves capable of feats they never would have considered possible before the necessities of war intervened, entire continents changed forever and their people with them, and you weren’t there? How would the world seem to you afterward?
And there was an entire group who did miss it, through no fault of their own, but one who nevertheless were outsiders in Britain after the war, who, although not exactly ostracised, were at least sidelined in the new order, who did not receive the hero’s welcome that the Brodies of the Second World War received. To reveal more would be to reveal too much of the plot, but Ferris dusts off their forgotten story and contrasts it to strong effect with that of Brodie and his ilk.
How war, struggle, conflict and danger affect people is another theme of the book, and the events of The Hanging Shed, while history to a hard-bitten ex-soldier like Brodie, still sit heavily on the mind of his sometime girlfriend, Advocate Samantha Campbell, back again in a disappointingly underdeveloped three-corner scenario between her, Brodie, and Brodie’s young admirer, Morag the Gazette’s receptionist.
All in all, it should work better than it does, but it’s unsatisfying because thematically driven stories need to grow organically from those themes, and this one doesn’t. It’s forced, possibly due to the unexpected success of the first book. This one has an intrusive, staccato, chapter structure, indicative of books designed to be read on the bus to work or in your lunch hour. That kind of formulaic design doesn’t do a book like this any favours and I would seriously advise Ferris to get himself a new editor. Worse was the stunted nature of the plot, as though an over-eager publisher was pushing Ferris to crank out another Brodie while the welcome was still warm. Simply put, it was written too fast, and the result is a denouement in a Scots Baronial castle which read more like something out of Alistair McLean or Desmond Bagley than a writer with a serious gift for characterization, social milieu and theme.
That said, the body of the book is a page turner and Ferris's depiction of a 1940s newspaper room, together with its tyranical editor, ruthlessly blue-pencilling sub and the drinking sessions in smoke-fugged pubs is terrifically well constructed. As in the last book, Ferris takes the easy road of casual religion-bashing in places, but since that little piece of fashionism is not hugely intrusive we can forgive it (just don't make a habit of it, Gordon).
All in all, it’s still better than most of the pulp on the publishers’ lists, but not as good as it could, or should, have been. Ferris needs to take his time with the next one and develop his themes more gracefully. If you are going to read this one, you should read The Hanging Shed first, as much of the plot is predicated on the events of that novel.
Could do better.
Shakespeare
Gordon Ferris’s last outing with his post-WWII Glasgow journalist protagonist, Douglas Brodie, went viral over at Kindle, and for good reason. An interesting character in an interesting place, tackling interesting ideas, Ferris proved he was more than just a by-the-numbers hack cranking out the tartan noir formula. He showed himself a writer capable of smoothly examining themes a literary author would struggle with, and carrying his readers along with him without a hint of “worthiness”. He tries the same tack with this new outing for Brodie, but while the talent still shows through, I didn’t find it as fulfilling as the previous effort.
In this one, set some months after the events of The Hanging Shed, ex-soldier and former police officer Brodie is back permanently in his native Glasgow, employed as junior crime reporter on the Glasgow Gazette, the kind of scummy crusader which the yellow press doesn’t produce anymore. Understudying old Glasgow crime hand Wullie McAllister, Brodie is called out to a derelict warehouse where the local constabulary have discovered the body of Councillor Alec Morton, a big wheel in the city’s post-war regeneration project, who is discovered hanging upside down with his head encased in a bucket of hardened cement.
It’s a promising start for a crime story, but Brodie doesn’t have much time to ponder Morton’s demise before the city is engulfed in the activities of the Glasgow Marshalls, a troop of vigilantes with a downer on the city’s corruption and vice, and also, for some reason, an interest in Brodie. With Wullie following the Morton investigation, Brodie is left to concentrate of the Marshalls, who are building up quite a following in a city tired of crime and official corruption. When the investigation points to nefarious dealings in the council chamber, the Marshalls appear red-hot favourites for Morton’s shampoo and set, but as ever with a good crime story (and it is actually quite good) it’s not that simple.
If there is one quality which distinguishes Tartan Noir from the more plot-driven efforts of English crime writers, it’s the thematic nature of the Scottish genre. In the last Brodie novel, the themes ware character and war. World War Two was the last act of a three act play that began in 1870 and was not finally and definitively over until 1945. At the end, a new Europe rose from the ashes, something that should have happened in 1918, but for whatever reason, did not, and it took a whole new generation - Brodie’s generation - to birth the new. That war was the seminal conflict not just of Brodie’s generation, but of every generation which has come after, and it continues to fascinate us today.
World War II changed an entire nation, an entire generation. But what if you missed it? Whole countries, joined in the kind of unified effort seen only once a millennium, producing men like Brodie, heroes who find themselves capable of feats they never would have considered possible before the necessities of war intervened, entire continents changed forever and their people with them, and you weren’t there? How would the world seem to you afterward?
And there was an entire group who did miss it, through no fault of their own, but one who nevertheless were outsiders in Britain after the war, who, although not exactly ostracised, were at least sidelined in the new order, who did not receive the hero’s welcome that the Brodies of the Second World War received. To reveal more would be to reveal too much of the plot, but Ferris dusts off their forgotten story and contrasts it to strong effect with that of Brodie and his ilk.
How war, struggle, conflict and danger affect people is another theme of the book, and the events of The Hanging Shed, while history to a hard-bitten ex-soldier like Brodie, still sit heavily on the mind of his sometime girlfriend, Advocate Samantha Campbell, back again in a disappointingly underdeveloped three-corner scenario between her, Brodie, and Brodie’s young admirer, Morag the Gazette’s receptionist.
All in all, it should work better than it does, but it’s unsatisfying because thematically driven stories need to grow organically from those themes, and this one doesn’t. It’s forced, possibly due to the unexpected success of the first book. This one has an intrusive, staccato, chapter structure, indicative of books designed to be read on the bus to work or in your lunch hour. That kind of formulaic design doesn’t do a book like this any favours and I would seriously advise Ferris to get himself a new editor. Worse was the stunted nature of the plot, as though an over-eager publisher was pushing Ferris to crank out another Brodie while the welcome was still warm. Simply put, it was written too fast, and the result is a denouement in a Scots Baronial castle which read more like something out of Alistair McLean or Desmond Bagley than a writer with a serious gift for characterization, social milieu and theme.
That said, the body of the book is a page turner and Ferris's depiction of a 1940s newspaper room, together with its tyranical editor, ruthlessly blue-pencilling sub and the drinking sessions in smoke-fugged pubs is terrifically well constructed. As in the last book, Ferris takes the easy road of casual religion-bashing in places, but since that little piece of fashionism is not hugely intrusive we can forgive it (just don't make a habit of it, Gordon).
All in all, it’s still better than most of the pulp on the publishers’ lists, but not as good as it could, or should, have been. Ferris needs to take his time with the next one and develop his themes more gracefully. If you are going to read this one, you should read The Hanging Shed first, as much of the plot is predicated on the events of that novel.
Could do better.