#50 - Absolution

Sometimes the heat makes life absolutely unbearable and I find it hard to concentrate, which means it's necessary to pick up a mystery. At first, Caro Ramsay's Absolution presented such a gritty and realistic portrait of Glasgow that I considered making it, instead of The Accidental, my Scotland stop in the Around the World in 52 Books challenge. I have since come to my senses just knowing how much Maylin loved that book makes me want to sit down and finish it this weekend (which I just might do having an extra day to spend up at the cottage on Monday). I've been half-way through Ali Smith's book for about four months now and there's no good reason why I am procrastinating finishing it.

Annnnnywaaaay, I did finish Absolution up this morning before work, having but a few pages to go after putting it down last night when my eyes refused to stay open for a moment longer. The story starts off really strong and introduces the book's main detective, DCI Alan McApline, in a clever way. Smart, rugged, and handsome, he's forced to reckon with his past when a case that's been haunting him for twenty years becomes the focus point of a current investigation. A young woman named Anna, pregnant but hideously scarred from an acid burn, lies in the hospital, and McAlpine, then a young policeman, is assigned to the case. Her killer is never found but her scarred face, known to McAlpine only through pictures, consumes him. As all good investigators do, he gets on with it, has a successful marriage to Helena (who becomes the subject of an unfortunate number of dropped plot threads) and tries to forget all about Anna, which we all know is impossible.

Fast-forward twenty years when McAlpine is transferred back to the unit he left after the double trauma of Anna's death and his brother's untimely drowning in the line of duty. The Crucifixion Killer, known to the cops on McAlpine's crew as 'Christopher Robin' (a quirky profiler's idea of a good code name), starts murdering women, and McAlpine's charged with finding him. The two cases intertwine until they come to a shocking conclusion, which makes this a little anti-Alexander McCall Smith, if I had to compare this book to my favourite mystery series, The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency.

While I found the plot somewhat muddled in places, and got a little frustrated with the fact that there are simply too many characters, I did like Ramsay's book overall. It's fast-paced, and way more Cracker than the bland American mysteries I usually watch on television (ahem, Law and Order), which I totally appreciated. While I didn't actually guess whodunnit by the end, I had figured out some of the clever twists Ramsay drops in throughout the narrative. All in all it's a perfectly satisfactory summer mystery for a foggy-headed girl on an August afternoon.

PHOTO IN CONTEXT: I read half the book here and half the book up north, I took the picture on my desk where you can see the remnants of my tax forms and the corner of my next abridged classic source material peaking in at the corner.

And if you're feeling particularly brave, check out the book's trailer. Ohhh, it gives me creeps just hearing the music in my head.