Cold Grave [Paperback]

After the intensely hard-hitting novel `Random' featuring a serial killer in Glasgow, Craig Robertson is compounding his place in the Scottish fiction crime genre with this second novel (the follow-up to `Snapshot) featuring the police scene of crimes photographer Tony Winter. In this novel there is a subtle shift slightly away from Tony to the main police protagonist D.S. Rachel Narey who has her own particular relationship with Tony but is characterised as an exceptionally focused and, for the most part, by the book police officer. However, what Robertson captures brilliantly in this book is the impact of her father's (himself a former police officer) Alzheimer's which colours her actions throughout, both as a police officer and a daughter, being emotionally wrought by the deterioration of her father but with a single-minded determination to bring his last unsolved murder case to a conclusion which has always been the chagrin of his life post-police. This unsolved murder case forms the basis of the book, leading Rachel to operate outside her usual moral and professional boundaries to attain justice for the victim and to put to bed this case that has so haunted her father and to what extent this case impacts on her other personal relationships. It's emotional stuff and despite my usual scepticism of a male author being able to effectively characterise women, Robertson accomplishes this with aplomb. This story is balanced effectively with the Tony and Uncle Danny show as they become involved in a connecting story line involving a community of travellers with a nicely balanced injection of humour amongst the bloodletting and counterbalanced again by Tony's dark preoccupation with the photographs he takes for his day-job and that pervade his psyche. You certainly get a full quota of human experience in this one!
I will finish by saying that as a reader and a bookseller, the delight about Robertson is the way he slots in so neatly between the more visceral and blackly funny Stuart Mac Bride and the generally safer confines of Rankin's `Rebus', so what you get is a good solid police procedural underpinned by a more adept feeling for the realm of human relationships and the darker recesses of the human psyche.

Only just found this author ,thought it was very good and could not put it down ,like the twist and turns, did not expect the killer to turn out to be who it was-a very good read,was upset have to wait until June for Lost Girls.I wish when people do reviews they would not give so much of the story away puts me off buying books when i know so much of the story line.

Random, Robertson's first novel, is a firm fixture on my top 10 crimes novels. Genuinely chilling and with one of the most retch-inducing murders ever committed to paper it marked him out as an author to watch. His next, Snapshot, continued in the same strong vein. It fleshed out DS Rachel Narey, who was an interesting but peripheral figure in Random, and introduced police photographer Tony Winter. Now they're both back for another outing in Cold Grave.

In 1993, during a period of unusually cold weather, Lake Menteith in Stirling freezes over and tourists and locals alike flock to the area to enjoy the rare occurrence. But as the day draws into evening and the crowd begins to thin a couple walk across the ice towards the island at the centre of the lake. Only the man comes back. A month later the young woman's body is discovered by ground staff, bludgeoned beyond recognition and degraded by the elements. The police christen her Lily. An exhaustive investigation follows, led by DI Alan Narey, but Lily is never indentified and her murderer is never caught.

Two decades on Alan Narey is in a nursing home, slowly succumbing to dementia. His failure to close the case - the last major one he handled before retirement - is still haunting him through his befuddlement. His daughter Rachel, desperate to find him some peace of mind, decides to reopen the Lily of the Lake investigation. With the crime scene outside of her jurisdiction she has to tackle it unofficially, so she takes her on-the-quiet lover Tony Winter for a surprise weekend away to a hotel overlooking the Lake of Menteith and starts stirring up the waters.

Laurence Paton, the man Rachel's father always suspected of the murder, is found dead. So, Rachel steps up her investigation, bringing in Tony's uncle Danny, another ex-copper with an array of contacts in Glasgow's netherworld and the hardman credentials to get them talking. Rumour has it that Lily was a gypsy princess murdered for dating outside the community. The men find themselves entering into a bargain with a travelling family which could well put an end to both Tony and Rachel's careers. They're operating in secret, lying to their superiors and housebreaking for information. Then an old friend of Paton's is attacked and they discover that he wasn't the only person involved in Lily's death. There are long buried secrets threatening to burst open and someone is prepared to kill to stop that happening.

Craig Robertson's journalistic past is serving him well as a crime writer, with tight prose, ripped-from-the-headlines plots and characters who you feel could step straight off the page. In Rachel Narey he's created a refreshingly realistic copper, gimmick-free and strong without being reduced to a ball busting cliché. But Tony Winter steals this book. A police photographer, with an unhealthy obsession with death and a `trophy' wall of favourite shots at home, he is more disturbing than the killers in most books. In the hands of a lesser writer this would be a complete turn off, but Robertson presents him as a documenter of death in the mould Weegee or Robert Capa, driven but perfectly self-aware.

Cold Grave is Robertson's strongest book yet. Engaging characters, sharp writing and a killer plot which builds to a memorable denouement. Buy it, buy it now.