Butcher (Lou Perlman) [Hardcover]

'Campbell Armstrong - the literary equivalent of an AK47' The Glasgow Daily Record Armstrong is a wonderfully atmospheric writer who shines a light into the dark corners of the human heart' The Sunday Telegraph 'The joy in Armstrong's novel is his effortless flicks of characterisation, his bittersweet insights. ...Armstrong's skill is not just an eye for a criminally good tale but a passion for the people that will populate it.' The Scotsman

"Armstrong is a masterful writer... Butcher is a must-read if you
like tough, gritty crime fiction with a memorable hero."

"A stomach-churning, roller-coaster ride of sheer terror, with
great characters, a wonderfully wry sense of humour, and a terrific plot."

Detective Lou Perlman has become an outcast from police HQ, doomed by a sadistic Chief-Superintendent to a seemingly infinite 'sick-list'. Deprived of doing battle with Glasgow's criminal underworld - which he needs the way a junkie needs a fix - he's barred from participating in the investigation of the bloodbath that has rocked the foundations of the city's lower depths. A new man has powered and blasted his way to the top of Glasgow's gangster fraternity, Reuben Chuck, a villain who promotes cruelty and murder even as he pursues an inscrutable religious awakening of his own. Only a gruesome discovery made in Perlman's own house invigorates him, and launches him into a simple inquiry that quickly becomes a ganglia of perplexities - the whereabouts of his missing love Miriam, body parts, a seemingly haunted house, dubious part-time surgeons, a mob of dangerous hooded teenagers, a ferret, and his own family's history - all leading, inexorably, strangely, to the deathly terrain of Reuben Chuck. In "Butcher", nothing is ever cleancut.

Campbell Armstrong - the literary equivalent of an AK47 - is back with another high octane magnificent grit-fest that sprays out plot strands like bullets. Several dead bodies, a crime world coup, a missing person, an absent love interest, a hand that seems to have misplaced the rest of its body and a headless corpse in a clown suit. And that’s just in the first 50 pages. Not to mention an endearingly carnaptious detective who makes Mark McManus's Taggart look chipper. Lou Perlman doesn’t do romance. He doesn’t do authority. He definitely doesn’t do housework. But he is in a class of his own. Daily Record, 15 July 2006

Campbell Armstrong was born in Glasgow. He has a degree in philosophy from the University of Sussex, and has taught creative writing at the State University of New York and at Arizona State University. After 20 years in the USA he moved to Ireland with his wife Rebecca. Armstrong has written numerous bestsellers during his career and his latest series featuring Lou Perlman has proved hugely successful. Armstrong has three sons and a daughter, and lives in an old house in Glasgow reputed to be haunted.