Book review: Fatal Last Words, by Quentin Jardine

Published on Thursday 2 July 2009 15:34

Fatal Last Words by Quentin Jardine Headline, 438pp, £19.99 Review by ALLAN MASSIE

QUENTIN JARDINE IS AMONG THE most professional of crime novelists, writing with assurance and authority. His novels are well- constructed, his intricate plots staying just the right side of the improbable. He knows when to quicken the pace and when to slow it down and build up tension. He likes his principal characters, which makes it easier for his readers to do so also. He entertains but doesn't disturb, and, although this is, by my count, his 20th novel featuring Bob Skinner – it opens with him waiting to hear if he will be appointed Chief Constable of Edinburgh and the Lothians – he hasn't yet succumbed to the temptation to make him into a "character" divorced from all connection with reality.

When publishers price books high it's because they either fear they can't sell many or know they can sell lots. In Jardine's case, it's the second. Fatal Last Words is priced at 19.99, stiff for a novel, but it will walk off the shelves. It should do particularly well at the Edinburgh Book Festival this year for in the first chapter the Festival Director finds the body of a novelist in the authors' yurt. The dead man is one of Edinburgh's three leading crime novelists and has recently been elected a Member of the Scottish Parliament on an anti-Trident ticket.

The doctor who examines the corpse is ready to diagnose a heart attack as cause of death, but no reader is likely to concur. What we have is an ingenious murder, the sort the dead man delighted in devising for his own books.

There are potential embarrassments for Skinner, especially if the murder has political ramifications, as seems possible, for his partner, Aileen de Marco, is now First Minister of Scotland heading a shaky coalition. Experienced readers will know that such considerations don't deter him from doing his duty. He is all the more determined to do so when he discovers that the Security Services seem to have been interested in the dead man.

It would be wrong to give away more of the plot: suffice to say that among the suspects is a former Secretary of State for Scotland; that there is a second murder; and then a third which may or may not be connected to the other two; that it involves excavation of some of the dark events of recent eastern European history; and that there is a very nicely managed and agreeable twist at the end, a piece of conjurer's misdirection – now you see it, now you don't.

Jardine mixes the professional and private lives of his policemen convincingly. For the most part they are good guys, under stress, certainly, but coping better than many fictional cops. There is no macho brutality about them, and none seems to be more than a social drinker. They talk rougher than they act, but not really very rough. Skinner himself may suggest he can bite nastily, but mostly does no more than bark. If you tread on his toes, you will come off worst, but most of the time he behaves well and wants to do what is right.

It is all very engaging as well as ingenious, and the unravelling of the mystery is excellently done. The book has one weakness, but it's common to the genre. A great deal of the dialogue is there to convey information rather than reveal character or as a representation of how people actually speak. This is perhaps lazy writing, but since the information offered in this way has to be conveyed to the reader, it may be as good a way of getting it across as any other.

Likewise, Jardine is inclined to tell you about his characters in a thumbnail sketch when they first appear rather than letting you discover them for yourself. This may be a fault, but it has the advantage of making for easy reading – and the reading here is not only easy but very enjoyable. Fatal Last Words will accompany many on their holidays and quite right too. A word of warning: if you read it in an airport while waiting for your delayed flight, you may get so engrossed that you miss the announcement that your plane is at last ready for boarding.