"Set in 1976, seven years after the murders recounted in Liam McIlvanney's breakout novel, The Quaker, this new Glasgow noir novel is a standalone mystery featuring serial character, Detective Duncan McCormack. McCormack has returned to Glasgow after a stint with the Metropolitan Police in London. The reason for his return is left a lurking mystery throughout. He is investigating a series of murders that seem at first to be the result of random bouts of violence among Glasgow's poor and destitute. McCormack, however, has insight into Glasgow's underground that many of his colleagues don't. He has a secret of his own that he guards carefully but that takes him places and introduces him to people that prove essential to his investigations"--Amazon.com.

Liam McIlvanney's first book, Burns the Radical, won the Saltire First Book Award. He is also the author of two previous novels, All the Colors of the Town and Where the Dead Men Go, which won the 2014 Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel. He is a regular contributor to numerous publications, including the London Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, and the Guardian. He is Stuart Professor of Scottish Studies at the University of Otago, New Zealand. He lives in Dunedin with his wife and four sons.