No Smoke

📖 The Scoop

Hugh Collins's debut work is at turns a vicious, hilarious, and highly original crime novel set in 1976 in his native Glasgow. This was a time when the Sensational Alex Harvey Band members were gods; flares, mullets, and flick-knives were the currency of cool; and the old criminal codes of honor had yet to be destroyed by the new breed of gangster that emerged in the 1980s. Barney Boone and his gang are running around town, thieving, conning, and getting involved in all sorts of minor criminal activity. Then a scam goes wrong and dead bodies start to pile up, including one of a young Asian man in a Glasgow police cell. The police are quick to try to pin it on one of the local hard men. But the real suspects could be much closer to home. No Smoke captures the language, humor, and culture of Scotland's most violent city in a way unsurpassed since James Kelman or William McIlvanney. It marks the arrival of a major new voice in both Scottish literature and crime fiction.

Genre: Fiction / General (fancy, right?)