Water of Death by
Paul Johnston
pbk out November 99
(NEL)
at £5.99
Nothing sends a shiver down the spine of a Scot as much as the discovery that someone is poisoning the whisky supplies. That's especially the case in Paul Johnston's imagined 21st century Edinburgh, a city state where the whisky is not only the means of pacifying the oppressed populace but also of enticing the tourists that keep the fragile economy afloat.
Quintillian Dalyrymple, a disgraced former guardsman who is reluctantly used by the city as a private eye on the public payroll, is called on to investigate when one of the winners of the city lottery -- another pacifier for the plebs -- disappears. When he's found dead, poisoned by nicotine in the Ultimate Usquebaugh -- doubly ironic in a city where smoking is forbidden to all but tourists, the pressure mounts on Quint to find the killer. And this time, it's personal.
Johnston's future city is a dark place, even in the Big Heat of post-global warming summer. Over three novels featuring Quint Dalyrymple, he has charted the political and social development of a totalitarian state struggling to find a balance. But this is never a dry treatise, for Johnston's vision is shot through with the bleakest of black humour, never losing sight of the humanity of his characters. This series is getting better all the time.
(
Val McDermid
- Gold Dagger winner & creator of Lindsay Gordon, Kate Brannigan & Tony Hill)
