Idle Hands by
Frederic Lindsay
pbk out March 00
(Coronet)
at £5.99
As you finish the books of most crime writers, even those of the
recently hard-boiled persuasion, there is a sense that all is now well
with the world. Not so, thank God, with Frederic Lindsay. His
protagonist Inspector Jim Meldrum is a complex, troubled and thoughtful
man. Forty-odd years old and with the obligatory broken marriage he
knows that achieving justice in society is no longer (was it ever?) a
question of having enough men in white hats.
This is the third book featuring Meldrum and from the first page that
unsettling quality is once again evident. Retired businessman Iain Bower
has been murdered. Investigating Bower's previous existence in Brussels,
Meldrum discovers that no-one will say a word against him. At his
funeral nevertheless, an unknown man urinates in the grave. Slowly
Meldrum, accompanied by his blundering sidekick Sergeant Robbie Shields,
follows up his leads-Bower's brother Frank, a Nigerian couple for whom
Bower occasionally babysat, the minister who presided over the funeral,
and Neil Heuk, a man with oddly coloured eyes, who claims that a casual
word from Meldrum dissuaded him from suicide. The investigation is also
hindered by someone else pretending to be Meldrum. But as Meldrum pieces
together the events of the past that have so catastrophically spilled
over into the present, both he and the reader come to appreciate once
again how the traumas of childhood direct and mark our lives.
This is a well-paced realistic book, the plot full of incident,
sometimes pushing the story along, sometimes throwing light on Meldrum's
own history, or illustrating the book's sub-text-the hazards of
childhood, both outside and within the family, and how we learn to
overcome or cope with them. The prose is reflective and urgent in turn.
Above all there is the all-too human character of Meldrum
himself-irascible, compassionate, flawed-the antagonism between him and
Shields adding to the tension. Something about him, particularly in
Kissing Judas, the first Meldrum book, reminds me (just a little) of
McIlvanney's Laidlaw. Put this one on the list.
Idle Hands by
Frederic Lindsay