Peter Turnbull

Page Updated: 06/04/2005

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Peter Turnbull - Page 2

First British Edition Collins Crime (1991)

And Did Murder Him
The body of a young man is found in a city centre alley. He has been stabbed to death and the murder weapon is lying close by, apparently discarded in panic. The fingerprints found on the knife prove to belong to a known associate of the deceased. It appears to be a motiveless murder, the result of a drunken brawl.
But the officers of Glasgow's P Division do not accept things at face value and begin to unravel a tale of premeditation and subterfuge. In doing so they follow a trail which leads via the squalid world of the drug addict to the prosperous ambience of the city's most prominent citizens.

First British Edition Collins Crime (1989)

Condition Purple
In Glasgow one summer evening a frightened young woman in heels is walking. Click. Click. Click.
The man who will kill her when he sees her is in the city. She knows this because she has seen his car cruising in the grid system, and she knows he knows where to find her because she stands every evening in an alley off Blythswood Street. The woman is just twenty-one years old. It is her death that will trigger P Division’s latest investigation.
She was found at l0.00pm, the knife still in her throat. She was a heroin addict and had the words `I belong to Dino' tattooed on her groin. They were the only clues. Yet as the police interviewed anyone in any way connected with her, combed the area, collated evidence, they began to build up a picture of the dead girl, her associates, family, lifestyle, which led to the arrest of a vicious murderer who had killed and would kill again.
Marked by growing tension and a chilling awareness of the evil that preys on those who inhabit the lower levels of a great city, Peter Turnbull's latest police procedural views with compassion the roles of policemen and victims alike.
`Vivid, hard-bitten attention-holder, loaded with street lore and the right sympathies, by a procedural master craftsman.’ John Coleman, Sunday Times
‘"Procedural" is an inadequate word for the squalid dramas of the naked city or the author’s ability to get inside his characters’ skins.’ Christopher Wordsworth, Observer
`This well-plotted police procedural is more than just another whodunit. For one thing, its cops are exceptionally interesting; they’re drawn as real people . . For another, the author’s refreshingly tart depiction of Glaswegian society cuts deeper than is common in the genre.’ US Publishers Weekly
`Good on family tensions, Even better on the squalor Of Clydeside.’ Matthew Coady, Guardian ‘Full of s
pot-on knowledge’ Julian Symons, Independent
`A tense, gritty and masterful novel.’ Chris Mills, Western Mail
`An authentically detailed, swift-moving book.’ Star

Two Way Cut
It was PC Phil Hamilton of Glasgow's P Division who found the corpse, on a stretch of rain-sodden waste ground, its severed head resting neatly on its chest. Forensic evidence revealed that the murdered man, a meticulous, hardworking accountant, had been killed elsewhere, and his body washed and laid out in immaculate new clothing. This ritual was only one of the puzzles P Division faced in nailing the murderer. Who was the oriental lady the victim had stayed with in a Saltcoats hotel? How was he involved with the Zambesi Club? And what was his connection with the Chinese restaurant which was burnt down on the night following his death?
`An author who continues to breathe life into the bones of the police procedural’ Observer
`I salute Mr Turnbull, his in-depth characters, narrative pace and pawky knowhow: a master’ John Coleman, Sunday Times
`Meticulously documented guided tour of Glasgow ... the solution makes shocking sense.’ Gerald Kaufman, Listener
‘Bitch of a city, gem of a procedural.’ Christopher Wordsworth, Observer
‘Another tough, gritty and absorbing police procedural from Peter Turnbull, now definitively established as Glasgow’s Ed McBain.’ T J. Binyon, The Times Literary Supplement
`Written with the smack of authority ... the cops are colourful and the settings authentic.’ John Welcome, Irish Times
‘Red herrings galore in spot-on story set against this Scottish City’s stark skyline.’ Bolton Evening News
‘Gripping.’ Angus Goodfellow, Northern Echo

Paperback - Collins Crime

Fair Friday
Bill McGarrigle was about to join the ranks of the unemployed. He would have done if he had not been brutally beaten up in a Glasgow back alley. Before he died, he had given the men of P Division enough to go on to start a full murder investigation. But it was the annual summer holiday - and the heat was bringing all the rats out of their holes with a vengeance.
‘Our own mean streets ... done to a turn by Turnbull’ The Times
‘This author is adding cubits to the British police procedural novel with each new book’ Observer

First British Edition Collins Crime Club (1982)

Dead Knock
The well-dressed woman who walked into the police station of Glasgow's P Division wanted to report a forthcoming murder : her own. Yet she walked out again without giving so much as her name, claiming that the police couldn't help her. Soon afterwards she was found dead in her home from a massive dose of heroin which was certainly not self-administered. Why didn't she run when she heard the dead knock? What terrible threat had made her submit to her own execution?
The only clues were a coded book and some old photographs. Painstakingly the Glasgow CID set to work, and the vivid characters who policed Peter Turnbull's first crime novel, Deep and Crisp and Even, are soon involved with the Dutch police in the person of an inspector from Amsterdam, with drug-trafficking, local government corruption, and some bizarre coincidences that seem to prove there's no such thing as a clean break.
Peter Turnbull’s second novel highlights one of Glasgow's more recent crime problems. It is every bit as gripping and authentic as his first as the action moves through different districts of the city, each one skillfully portrayed.