The Strathbungo Cellists

Aulay Mackay, the MC, has a great line in Glasgow street patter in this. The writers style is consistent throughout with great one liners and witty dialogue between all the characters, who mostly inhabit the criminal fraternity in a Glasgow South Side district. Aulay Mackay as explained in a whole chapter of backstory left Glasgow to join the army, toured in Iraq and Afghanistan, has been a bodyguard for a wealthy american who gets killed, murders the killers himself, gets arrested by the US army as a result but appears to have been bailed out by the connivance of a british army major in return for ?working for MI5. What an army major in Baghdad is doing recruiting someone to infiltrate the gangs of Polmadie hasn't been explained yet. The lengthy backstory is a strong story in itself with lots of interesting characters and so perhaps we get back to it later. There are a number of threads still to follow such as what accident did Aulays dad have and why does he have a mental age of 12? In Glasgow Eddie Curren is the most believable and recognisable character in the whole tale. Old sytle Glasgow protestant, racist, bigot, violent hoodlum, whose day is done, with new younger men taking over crime in the district. He dies in ch3, hastened on his way having been shot in the leg by his daughter. Her colourful and attractive character is a bit more difficult to swallow. Beautiful, (the author suggests an Uma Thurman lookalike) raised in a criminal family she is now one of Glasgows top young criminal lawyers. She shoots her own father (Eddie) when he assaults her boyfriend. Her father dies soon after, but not before he has arranged for her boyfriend to be killed in a hit and run accident. Not exactly the kind of behaviour most lawyers get up to and credulity is stretched a bit with this. She now seems to be more involved with new top criminal banana Chancer Mackinnon. There is a section towards the end of the upload where Shaz meets with Chancer and then with Maclean, a sleazy investigative journalist, and we are told what happens in Aulays voice as if he were there (but he wasnt and only hears second hand from Shaz as to what went on). This seemed to me a false note. The other problem I had was identifying with the motivations of Aulay and empathising with his character. Why exactly is he infiltrating the Polmadie gang? The intriguing Strathbungo cellists have only been mentioned in passing so far. Some of the language (eg trainers, sorry sneakers) verges on self conscious rather than quality wisecracking at times ( Marlowe, even Taggart would never have said that). Great style and dialogue and lots of intrigue but who are we rooting for in this?

Hi Callum,

can't wait to read more of this and I love the way you write the dialogue. The fast pace of this ensures the reader is drawn in and gets an idea of characters from the very start.

Hope to have this on my shelf very soon!

Best
Rusty