The Moon's More Feeble Fire and To The Shades Descend, by Allan Gaw review: 'addictive'

In Edinburgh-born pathologist Dr Jack Cuthbert, Allan Gaw has created one of the most interesting and persuasive crime fiction heroes of recent times, writes Allan Massie

These two novels are the second and third by Allan Gaw, featuring as hero the Edinburgh-born pathologist, Dr Jack Cuthbert. The Moon’s More Feeble Fire was published in April, The Shades Descend is out this month, and these follow the first book in the series, The Silent House of Sleep, released last year and previously reviewed in The Scotsman. There is a fourth Cuthbert novel to be published by Polygon in a few months, and then, I hope, more. It is a series which may easily become addictive.

Allan Gaw | Contributed

The stories are set between the two World Wars, though there are also flashbacks to Cuthbert's experiences in the trenches between 1916 and 1918. Cuthbert himself, a tall commanding figure, a repressed homosexual with a fetish for highly polished black boots, is a splendid figure, highly intelligent, devoted to the reading of Latin verse, an outstanding pathologist, scrupulous but also awkward. He is attached to Scotland Yard, though policemen find him at first an awkward customer. He is that rarity in modern fiction, an honourable man.

He is served in his bachelor apartment by a Belgian lady, Madame Smith, her English husband long vanished. She is devoted to Cuthbert and an excellent cook.

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The taciturn, sometimes abrupt Cuthbert has won the respect of Scotland Yard, after some initial hesitation, and the admiration of his assistants, but he is not an easy man, though an admirably polite one, this no doubt the consequence of his Edinburgh upbringing. Shy and taciturn, he remains enigmatic. I should say he is the most engaging hero of crime fiction I have come upon recently, though the detailed accounts of his professional work are beyond me and sometimes tiresomely so. No doubt readers better versed in the subject will find the descriptions of his work fascinating.

The first of the two novels reviewed here, The Moon’s More Feeble Fire, is, though enjoyable, the weakest of the three published so far. It begins, as too many crime novels do - too many real life crimes also, I suppose - with the murder of three prostitutes in Soho. None is a drug addict, but Cuthbert finds identical marks of a needle on each body. His investigation carries him into an into an exploration of drug addiction among the London upper classes. This is well done, but has been too often done to offer novelty, though Cuthbert is a sufficiently fascinating character to carry the story along.

To The Shades Descend is much more satisfying, the best of the books in the sequence so far. It is set in Glasgow where Cuthbert has been invited to the university, perhaps to succeed the elderly Dr Glaister as Head of the Department. It is immediately clear that he is not welcome - he is, after all, an Edinburgh man, and Glaister is already fixing for his own son to succeed him.

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Anyway, Cuthbert knows next to nothing about Glasgow (though he admires Central Station) and is about to return to London when he is instructed by the government to take over the investigation of a hideous atroctity. A bomb has exploded at a political rally and the prospective candidate for Sir Oswald Mosley's New Party has been murdered. Fascism, it seems, has hit the city and Glasgow Jews are suspects.

Here, I think, Gaw takes some liberty with history, for in February 1931 Mosley was not yet a Fascist and his New Party was founded after he had left the Labour Government, when his Keynesian plan for dealing with the Depression was rejected by the Cabinet. The New Party initially attracted some serious politicians - Harold Macmillan nearly joined it - and it was only when it flopped at that year's General Election that Mosley embraced the Fascist idea. Still, I think the liberty justified and in the novel it is not surprising that suspicion for the murder is directed at Glasgow's small Jewish community.

The forensic examination of the bombing is grippingly done - even for me - but better still are the sometimes awkward relations of Cuthbert with the Glasgow police, most of whom at first view this interloper with suspicion and resentment. The way in which Cuthbert gradually wins the respect and confidence of some of the junior officers is admirably and credibly (not always the same thing) recounted. Meanwhile, the top brass of the Glasgow force have little to recommend them.

In short, this is a splendidly developed novel and the skill with which Gaw develops the narrative is delightful. Jack Cuthbert is surely the most interesting and persuasive crime hero to have appeared for some time. I look forward eagerly to the fourth novel and trust that other ones will follow.

The Moon's More Feeble Fire, by Allan Gaw, Polygon, £9.99

To The Shades Descend, by Allan Gaw, Polygon, £9.99