A city torn apart.
Glasgow, 1969. In the grip of the worst winter for years, the city is brought to its knees by a killer whose name fills the streets with fear: the Quaker. He takes his next victim the third woman from the same nightclub and dumps her in the street like rubbish.
A detective with everything to prove.
The police are left chasing a ghost, with no new leads and no hope of catching their prey. DI McCormack, a talented young detective from the Highlands, is ordered to join the investigation. But his arrival is met with anger from a group of officers on the brink of despair. Soon he learns just how difficult life can be for an outsider.
A killer who hunts in the shadows.
When another woman is found murdered in a tenement flat, it’s clear the case is by no means over. From ruined backstreets to the dark heart of Glasgow, McCormack follows a trail of secrets that will change the city and his life forever
The Quaker, Liam McIlvanney
In 1977 William McIlvanney released Laidlaw, a novel which is widely regarded as being the first Tartan Noir novel. Following his death in 2015 the award for the best Scottish crime book was renamed the McIlvanney Prize in his honour. This year the prize was awarded to William McIlvanney’s son Liam for his novel The Quaker which is loosely based upon the three Bible John murders in Glasgow in the late 60’s. Fans of Ian Rankin will recognise Bible John from the 8th Rebus novel Black and Blue.
After a Prologue and the first of three disturbing chapters telling the murders from the perspective of the victims The Quaker begins with DI Duncan McCormack entering the Bible John murder investigation room. It’s been over a year since the first murder and the investigation has ground to a halt. He’s been sent there to write a report on the investigation, a report which senior hope to use as justification for winding up the investigation. McCormack isn’t happy to be there, he’d rather be chasing down Glasgow crime boss John McGlashan. He’s not made welcome either and a frosty partnership with DS Goldie begins. McCormack will eventually write his report, but he’ll also become obsessed with the investigation and try to solve it himself.
Running parallel to the McCormack’s story is one dedicated to Alex Paton, a former Glasgow resident and peterman, who’s returning to Glasgow to take part in a robbery. Paton is precise, doesn’t take unnecessary risks and resents having to pay a percentage of their takings to McGlashan, a fee for carrying out a robbery on his patch. The storylines slowly converge and after a fourth murder the police think they have their man, but do they?
There is a third and final part to The Quaker which makes it stand out. Although Liam McIlvanney was born in Scotland and studied at Glasgow University, he now lives in New Zealand where he is the Stuart Professor of Scottish Studies at University of Otago. This gives The Quaker a strong sense of an outsider looking in at the people and city of Glasgow during a time when the city was undergoing a period of great upheaval. A time when many buildings were being torn down and neighbourhoods changed overnight. It all makes for a highly enjoyable read and DI Duncan McCormack is also a character who deserves future novels.
The Quaker, Liam McIlvanney
The problem with books like THE QUAKER is that Liam McIlvanney calls himself a 'slow motion writer' so his books are rare little gems, dropped into your reading list like pearls. To be savoured, unless desperation takes over, and like me, you move the first two Gerry Conway books (ALL THE COLOURS OF THE TOWN and WHERE THE DEAD MEN GO) into the re-read pile, on the strength of just how good THE QUAKER was.
In Glasgow in the late 1960's there was a real life serial killer - 'Bible John' who killed three women and then disappeared (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_John). In my mind, there have been a few Scottish noir novelists who have incorporated Bible John aspects into their novels, with THE QUAKER joining those ranks, although each of them approaches this in a different matter. McIlvanney, won the best Scottish crime novel prize in 2018 (the prize now re-named in honour his late novelist father, William McIlvanney), for THE QUAKER, and at the time he was quoted in the Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/sep/21/liam-mcilvanney-wins-scott...) as saying:
...had previously told the Herald Scotland that while he started out writing a “true-life novel” about the Bible John murders, he quickly changed his mind.
"Part of what gave me pause was dubiety over writing about something that was still a source of hurt to people, the relatives of the victims. But following the facts of the story with utter faithfulness constrained what I wanted to do. As a writer your duty is to the story rather than the facts as they happened,” he said, in July. “So I thought it was easier if I based it loosely on the Bible John story, then fictionalised it. It gives you leeway to take care of the trajectory of the story.”
It's not hard to understand the fascination with this story - unresolved serial killer lines of enquiry dwell in people's minds. Using the true facts as a springboard, never resorting to sensationalism or anything that could cause pain to relatives or those involved in the true case, what McIlvanney has done is create a story that is steeped in the time in which it is set, centred around an interesting and very real young detective, adding a more modern touch by giving a voice to the victims, personalising them in a way that was most unexpected.
Of course, DI Duncan McCormack, pulled into the 'Quaker' investigation after recent success elsewhere is set up to be the quintessential outsider. Not from the area, it's through his eyes that you get glimpses of the city of the 1960's, one that's almost physically twitching as the wait for the killer to strike again drags out. He's resented by the squad he's parachuted into, he's under pressure from bosses desperate for resolution, and he's dealing with plenty of stuff in his own head, in his own life to boot. His lone wolf type standing is nicely pitched against those internal battles, and the victims, and the place and the overall effect that a random killer has in a town that probably isn't any stranger to violence - but violence explained and not explained are two very different beasts.
All of which left me hoping that McCormack's coming back, and McIlvanney is mulling his next case, and that maybe, just maybe the third Gerry Conway book is loitering somewhere on the fringes as well.