Hit and Run [Paperback]

Doug Johnstone's previous novel Smokeheads was one hell of a read, a breakneck tear-up of a book following four blokes on a whiskey tour of Islay which descends into sex, drugs and extreme violence. Peat black and shot through with scorching wit, plaudits came in from all angles. So expectations were always going to be high for Hit and Run, his second outing on Faber and Faber's eclectic and rapidly expanding crime list.

Driving home from a swanky PR do in Edinburgh with his girlfriend and brother - everyone up to the eyeballs on pilfered narcotics and beetroot schnapps - Billy Blackmore drives through a pedestrian. Reporting it will mean lost jobs, arrest, maybe prison, so they do the only logical thing, take the body and dump it over the side of Salisbury Crags.

The next morning, bashed up and hungover, Billy finds himself dragged back to the scene in his professional capacity as trainee crime reporter on The Evening Standard. They've got a scoop and the story is going to be huge - Edinburgh's gangster number one has been found dead at the bottom of the Crags. Frank Whitehouse wasn't the kind of man to commit suicide so that only leaves murder and the police have plenty of suspects. The Mackies, a rival crime family looking to expand; Frank's psychotic brother Dean; or maybe the widow Adele, a bong-hitting femme fatale who soon has Billy's balls nestled in the palm of her hand.

Frank Whitehouse isn't the only person who took a knock in the crash though and as Billy's professional reputation is shooting up his personal life is fracturing. He is dogged by guilt about leaving the scene of the crime, and dosed up against the injuries which have got him passing out and smelling smoke. The closer he gets to Adele the more conflicted he becomes. But there's no time to reflect on any of that because the story has to be written and if Billy backs out of his scoop now how's that going to look?

Johnstone has written an elegant explosion of that `what if' moment which starts when someone gets behind the wheel drunk. It's something that happens all the time, and that's genuinely scary. If that all sounds a bit po-faced I can assure you the book isn't. Yes, it's dark and brutal as you would expect from Johnstone, stuffed with drugs, violence and some rather disturbing sex, but it's also very funny. Johnstone has a great ear for banter, and the relationship between Billy and his mentor Rose is really quite touching.

I absolutely tore through Hit and Run. Johnston knows how create pace and thrust in a book, his prose is crisp, his characterisation pin-sharp and even when he's handling a classic noir plotline like this his journalistic sensibilities keep everything credible. Scottish crime fiction is a tough playground right now but with Hit and Run Doug Johnstone proves he can hold his own with the best of them.

In this dark, violent and thoroughly enjoyable novel by Scots author Doug Johnstone, you get exactly what it says on the tin, or I should say cover.

Hit & Run tells the story of an accident, three young professionals on their way home in the early hours, drunk and off their heads with goodness knows what, when suddenly, boom, they hit a man in the middle of the road.

If the driver had then done the right thing, called the police and an ambulance, this would have been a short story. Thank goodness they didn't.

Do you ever, in the silent hours when you can't sleep, think back on your life and try to map out the precise choices and decisions that you made that brought you to where you are now? We think that we can plan out our lives, that we are in charge of the big decisions that ultimately determine our destiny, but are we? How would our lives be different if we'd gone home that night by bus or if we hadn't gone to that party or if we hadn't answered the phone that particular day?

Doug Johnstone examines in Hit & Run how one fateful act can alter the course of our lives forever, how one wrong decision made in a panic, can drastically affect everything that we know and hold dear from that moment on.

Hit & Run is mostly set in the small area of Edinburgh in and around the Scottish Parliament, Dynamic Earth and Arthur's Seat, well known by natives and tourists alike. He expertly brings together the genteel elegance of the city and its dirty underpants, one never far away from the other. There are suggestions of corruption at all levels in the city and as Billy, the main character, drives around from the rich to the mean streets, his guilt swelling like a mushroom in the dark, he takes on a one man crusade to sort out the moral and criminal mess that the accident has uncovered, a mess not of his making but one he powerfully released as if he had squeezed the trigger of a starting pistol.

Paired down to it's main components, Johnstone never loses his goal, doesn't get sidetracked into other character's lives even though this would have been easy to do and interesting for the reader. Billy is Johnstone's focus, his is the story to tell and as the clock ticks inside Billy's head, he launches himself down a path of destruction in a bid to make amends for one quick mistake.

Great reading so don't miss out on this one.

A fast paced thriller with a good insight into how remorse about actions can tear you apart. As is usual with his books the dialogue is streaked with dark humour, the characters come alive and so does Edinburgh. I really enjoyed the book. With each book the writing gets better and he now has a place in tartan noir along with Brookmyre and McBride.