Stronger Than Death

I've made it my unofficial goal in life to read every Scottish crime novel I can find, ever since discovering Laidlaw so many years ago (speaking of Laidlaw, did anyone else wonder if Hen's Teeth gave a nod to McIlvanney? Not a flattering one if so, and I've enjoyed wondering about it.). Over the years I've managed to keep a map of sorts in my mind, each major Scottish city pinned with the local detective. At one point I even got obsessive enough to try and plot each location given in the Rebus series. It was a form of tourism, I suppose.

I mention this because, near the end of Stronger Than Death, my mind rather randomly put it together that Kellen Stewart and Maureen O'Donnell were experiencing their own kinds of trauma around the same show more time. I looked it up, and sure enough, Maureen (of the excellent Garnet Hill cycle) was making her initial horrific discovery pretty close to the time that Kellen was experiencing yet another brush with murder in this final (?) novel of her series. It's been a comparison I've not been able to shake, not because they are alike --they are and they aren't. I kept forgetting Kellen Stewart was in Glasgow, so much of her time is spent at her farm on the outskirts.

There is probably much to be said about the similarities between Maureen and Kellen; I can see plenty of them without having to stretch too far. But it wasn't any similarity between the two, or even between the two Glasgows, that made the connection to me. Rather, it was that the last time I sat stunned at the feelings evoked from a book was way back when I first read Garnet Hill. In fact, it is the feeling, the verb, that stands out, now that I've finished the three Kellen Stewart novels.

All of this is to say that I've been absolutely percolating for the last three or four days, as I really started to read at a steady clip. Manda Scott's three Stewart novels (because this is really a review of the three, on the occasion of finishing the last) are each better than the last, but in quiet ways. Crime seems to happen around Kellen, which is an interesting and refreshing way to structure crime novels. As a result, Kellen finds herself in varying degrees of involvement in these crimes. By the time of Stronger Than Death, she's in some ways frustrated that she's not more at the center of things, crimewise, than she is, but it makes for a much better experience for the reader. That, for me, is where the emotional resonance really hit home.

I'm rambling. I really should have thought more about this before posting, but I've not been keeping up with my "reviews," and I wanted something for posterity with this one. Manda Scott is a different kind of crime writer, excellently different. Like Denise Mina and few others that I've read in Scottish crime fiction, she seems more interested in the interior lives of characters, particularly Kellen's, and particularly in Stronger Than Death. Chapter five is a revelation, or at least it was to me. I've read it multiple times, and it stands alone so well that I've made a note to try and use it in my teaching. For what, I don't know (yet). It is so beautiful and devastating in how it uses impending death to give us insight into both Kellen and her patient. That chapter, and this book, for me, embodies that comforting kind of sadness that comes from looking back on loss and grief. Excellent read. show less

An experienced climber falls, but he was too good to be careless. Is it murder?