Shatter the Bones. Stuart MacBride. Harper (2012)

A brutally compelling and engrossing thriller. Plunging into the story right from the opening down to the flinty and unforgiving conclusion this story never slows down. A mother and daughter, rising stars of a televised talent show, are kidnapped and the ransom demand is posted on the internet. The police are left with no clues and increasing public and professional pressure. Detective Sergeant Logan McRae and his colleagues are facing a very public and dangerous failure. As the the pressure mounts McRae find that the results of a botched drugs raid are becoming very nasty. The story, laced with the blackest gallows humour, moves at speed, the reveals are cunningly staged and the the truth is always much worse that it it appears at first. The plot leaves no-one unscathed and the innocent pay the greatest price.
The bleak plot is  gripping, it is still less of an attraction than the vigorous and fantastic cast that boil with energy, frustration and the unmistakable pulse of life. Logan McRae has to work very hard to keep up with the rest of the cast, most particularly the specular DI Steel, who bursts off the pages with a foul mouthed glory. The whole cast of police officers, with a single sorry exception, are satisfyingly diverse and free from genre cliches. They feel like a team under fierce pressure and responding badly while trying to do the job properly. The exception is a surprisingly false note struck by an ambitious and frankly stupid officer from an outside agency. He is a straw man constructed for no clear reason other that to give a face to the bureaucratic pressure the team are under.It is a serious flaw in the book that is written with subtly and care for all the cast no matter how small their role. The walking cliché trips up the reader and throws the reader out of the flow of the story. 
Happily the overall force of the book is so great that it is possible to get back into the swing and enjoy the very savage world that Stuart MacBride has created. The clever manipulation of the easily roused public, entranced by the drama of the kidnapping and enjoying the participation invited by the kidnappers is not heavy handed. The temptation to preach about televised talent shows and the manufacturing of  stars is avoided, the opportunities it presents for brutal exploitation are well presented. The villains are well organised and suitably ruthless, they make the plot work because they are never easy prey. A sub-plot about a the fall out from a drugs raid gives Stuart MacBride plenty of room to create a very memorable cast of shattered and desperate people who are gripping without ever being sympathetic. Using humour to undercut despair this is a superb thriller.

Dark Blood. Stuart MacBride. HarperCollins (2010)

This is a gripping, savage, brutal and very darkly funny thriller with a superbly realised cast and a great setting. Richard Knox, a violent sexual predator, is released from prison and being housed in Aberdeen. DS Logan McRae is involved with the protection of Richard Knox, aided by Detective Superintendent Danby from Nothumbria, the man who had arrested Knox years earlier. Complicating matters are the efforts by an Edinburgh gangster to set up in Aberdeen, counterfeit goods and money and a thief robbing jewelry shops with a sawn-off sledgehammer. The reveals are staged with care and relish, the cast are all active and engaging, the plot gets darker with each turn and it leads to a horrifying conclusion.
Everything in this story works well, the setting, Aberdeen in the snowy depths on winter, acts as the bleak backdrop to the even bleaker activities of the cast. Logan McRae is is a downward spiral, personally and professionally and his efforts to regain a hold om his life push nicely against the currents of the story. The plot is big and very well constructed, the main story weaves and twists alongside a number of smaller threads, neither detract for each other and they combine to give a vivid picture of the criminal activity within the city.
Bursting out of the book is Detective Inspector Steel, a foul mouthed force of nature who provides a great deal of the book tar black humour. The whole cast are given a vivid life and their active determination gives the story tremendous energy and momentum. This violent, unpredictable and very funny book is a great read, written with great care and skill, top flight crime fiction.