Bill Kirton

John Grant carves figureheads for the wooden ships being built in Aberdeen. When the shipwright on his latest boat is murdered, it's up to John to find the murderer. There's a lot of possible suspects as Jimmie Crombie was an extremely unlikeable man. Meanwhile, the ship's owner, William Anderson, wants John to carve a figurehead after Elizabeth Anderson, his wife. Elizabeth schemes with her daughter Helen for John to model Helen instead. Helen is also interested in the murder, an unusual position for a woman in that time period.
I enjoyed this book very much. It is well-written and true to the period and setting. I learned a lot about wooden shipbuilding and the age of sail. All the characters are interesting. They come from all walks of life but display the resilience and hard work as well as poverty and crime. I especially liked the part about the young apprentice who decides to emigrate to America. This book is a true slice of life in the early part of the nineteenth century.
I highly recommend The Figurehead.… (altro)

Opening this crime spoof at the first page, I had no real idea what to expect. Having read several of Bill Kirton’s witty, inventive blog posts, however, I had an idea that I’d enjoy it, and I was happy to be proved right. This is a gripping and frequently hilarious read, which switches effortlessly between multiple points of view and is told in crisp, intelligent writing. Writing comedy is hard – for some of us it’s impossible – so I always admire writers who can make me laugh, and Bill Kirton is one of them. The Sparrow Conundrum is also a daring book, in some ways – Kirton defies the received wisdom put forward in a hundred creative writing courses, for example, by opening the book with an incident involving two characters who don’t play any further part in the action. And you know what? It works.

The story follows a hapless French teacher, Christopher Machin, who finds to his astonishment that he’s managed to become entangled in the criminal underworld and industrial espionage surrounding the Aberdeen oil industry. When you’re as timid, mild-mannered and basically ineffectual as Machin, this is a terrifying prospect – as he finds one day when his garden is blown up in a failed assassination attempt.

Soon Machin finds himself being caught in the crossfire between two rival criminal gangs, one of them called “the Cage”, whose agents are named after birds. “Eagle” – naturally – is in charge, giving orders to his underlings “Hawk” and “Kestrel”, who in turn pass instructions on to their own minions. Machin, appropriately, is named “Sparrow”, and belongs somewhere at the bottom of the pecking order. The Cage may be a ruthless criminal organisation, but it’s actually much like any bureaucratic organisation in many ways. It employs its own, often incomprehensible, jargon. Its employees engage in rivalry, all chasing after the top spot, which means that the man who actually occupies the boss’s chair has to be continually alert. Long periods of inactivity contrast with short bursts of frenetic action. The occupants of this singular world add their own, particular colour to the story. The boss, Eagle, has a passion for country music and sexual submission (which has hilarious consequences when he falls for one of my favourite characters, Bad Boy Jackson, a wrestler with a passion for knitting). Another character has an elbow fetish.

These vivid, larger-than-life characters would, in the hands of a less skilled writer, have the potential to become nothing but overblown stereotypes, but Kirton also manages to invest them with a winning humanity and vulnerability, while never letting up on the humour. Machin is a sympathetic character, of course, an everyman figure whose confusion and disbelief mirror what most of us would feel if we found ourselves being caught up in such alarming events. But even Eagle, for example, can on occasion be an almost appealing character, as here, when he’s yearning for Bad Boy Jackson:

At last, frustration and weariness had driven him in his longing to adopt the archetypal pose of unrequited lovers, poised on the edge of the abyss of night, staring Juliet-like into the velvet of infinity, and whispering the gentle sounds of his lover’s name into the soft darkness.

“Bad Boy, Bad Boy, where the fuck are you, Bad Boy?” he sighed.

I love that passage: the beauty of the language in the first paragraph, the universality of the experience it represents, and the brilliantly bathetic second paragraph.

Add to this colourful cast of characters a psychopathic policeman, Lodgedale, and a ruthless but oddly charming ex-girlfriend, Tessa, and you’ve got a vivid company who all but jump off the page, as does the story. I truly found it difficult to put this fast-paced and funny novel down. What sets it apart from other funny and fast-paced novels, perhaps, is the quality of the writing. Kirton tells his story in economic prose that is also perfectly, effortlessly right.
… (altro)

First Line: Tommy Davidson was in his study, kneeling on a special praying chair which he and his wife had been given by some French friends in Rennes.

There haven't been many joyful moments in Rhona Kirk's life. An endless procession of her drunken mother's boyfriends almost inevitably led to the young woman's brutal rape. The rapist never went to prison, and now other men in Rhona's life are beginning to disappear.

Tommy Davidson's wife and daughter were killed when their vehicle was struck by a drunk driver. The drunk driver hired himself a good lawyer and walked away a free man. Unable to face life alone, Davidson commits suicide, and his brother Andrew is left to face a world he believes is utterly devoid of justice. It is a world in which he does not want to live. Is there any way he can possibly make a difference?

When villains begin to disappear from the streets of Cairnburgh, Scotland, jokes are made down at the police station. Detective Chief Inspector Jack Carston joins in, and why not? All too often these missing men have committed their crimes and then been allowed to walk away because of the machinations of their lawyers. If a vigilante is patrolling the city's streets, more power to him. May he succeed where the police can't.

At least, that's what Carston thinks at the beginning. When his thoughts begin to mirror the resident Neanderthal, Spurle's, Jack takes stock. Just how much do his thoughts influence his actions, his words, his behavior?

This third Jack Carston mystery is a look into the heart of vigilantism. In a world where the criminal justice system seems to work only for the criminals, is there any real harm in letting vigilantes take the law into their own hands to get vicious killers and rapists off the streets? Is there any real harm in the police letting vigilantes take care of business when their own hands seem to be tied by the courts of law?

Kirton tells an engrossing story as he examines these questions. His main character, DCI Jack Carston, is a happily married man who thinks nothing of being his wife's dress mannequin whenever she needs to pin up a hem or check the hang of a sleeve. By having Carston compare himself to someone like Spurle-- a complete misanthrope who wouldn't know political correctness if it had his gonads in a vise-- we understand how worried Carston is, not only by his own thoughts, but by what's happening on the streets of his city.

While Carston and his men are trying to find clues and piece them together, we witness the birth and development of a vigilante in Andrew Davidson. The Darkness is never about who done it; it's all about why it was done. In reading alternating chapters written by Davidson, we can see his transformation from an angry, grieving brother into something ugly and frightening that even Davidson himself doesn't recognize.

Once again, Bill Kirton delivers a well-told tale wrapped in several thought-provoking questions. Although The Darkness stands well on its own, I'd suggest you get to know Jack Carston by reading the first book in the series, Material Evidence. Carston is one of my favorite coppers.… (altro)