I should have stopped right there and asked her why, but I was already making calculations in my head, adding up time, manpower and money, wheeling straight into business as she knew I would. The central character Rilke - an auctioneer at a struggling auction house certainly likes to do things by the excess. I very much enjoyed Naming The Bones and she had some success with a trilogy of dystopian, pandemic novels between 2014 and 2017, A Lovely Way To Burn, Death Is A Welcome Guest and No Dominion. At the same time, he's not depicted as a lone wolf, hard man who cares - typical of many crime fiction books. the city becomes a character in its own right; Gothic, dismal, decaying and frightening in equal measure".

Louise Welsh - The Scotsman Book review: The Second Cut, by Louise Welsh - The Scotsman

The story itself takes place over the course of a week, but Rilke's sense of time is highly fluid and not exactly precise. Along with Rilke there's a supporting cast of wonderful characters - Rose, his slightly overblown, vaguely past it, sexual predator boss, whose best friend is ultimately Rilke - the one man who just isn't vaguely interested in her sexually no matter what she does. The shabby but not chic estate is being sold by two cousins on behalf of their elderly aunt, who is apparently in a care home in Thailand. The author has written, from the book, with her signature, "Who would have thought the old man had so much blood in him.Mainly because the author was more interested in showing the city's seedy netherworld than the actual plot of the book.

The Cutting Room by Louise Welsh | Waterstones

Louise Welsh: 'The thing about genre is conventions you can muck about with … crime is not elevated, we all feel we can read it' ". Despite all that is going around her, Stevie Flint is convinced that her boyfriend’s death was not a result of the disease or any other natural cause. The plot comes with two threads, one following the devastating chaos and the other one focusing on Simon’s demise. The Guardian described it as a "gleefully black, knowing first novel", also noting that it "effortlessly glides [from a detective novel] into literary fiction". I’m not sure what my bookshelves would tell someone, except that I have a wide range of interests, that some might say is unfocused.Rilke’ is simply an absurd name for a scummy detective character, but worse is the sub-Dickensian villain, named ‘McKindless’. Okay, for all my negativity, I still think this was a good book, mostly because of the premise, and the fact that Rilke's morals and ethics are interesting (if somewhat lacking). I honestly could not help but fall madly in love with him and I can’t wait to read more from him in the future.

The Cutting Room (Canons) by Louise Welsh | Goodreads The Cutting Room (Canons) by Louise Welsh | Goodreads

Yet again, reading the summary, this should be the type of book I'd really enjoy so I get the rationale behind my choice to read it. I don't think there will be anything of interest to me, more fuel for the bonfire I suspect, but I would appreciate your discretion. At the end a minor character is revealed to be another person from earlier in the book, which might have been worked great if that person had made any impression on the reader when he was encountered first off.In this hidden city haunted by a host of vividly drawn characters, Rilke comes face to face with the dark desires and illicit urges that lurk behind even the most respectable facades. It cheered me to think that given a choice the average Scottish pervert wanted to wank to the robust Scottish girl in the street. I'm pretty sure that, if you didn't know that Welsh was female, you'd be convinced the author was a man.