Review: BITTER WATER, Gordon Ferris

• ZFormat: Kindle (Amazon)
  
• File Size: 675 KB
• Print Length: 368 pages
• Publisher: Corvus; First Edition edition (April 1, 2012)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B006VSP8GG

Synopsis (Amazon)

Glasgow's melting. The temperature is rising and so is the murder rate. Douglas Brodie, ex-policeman, ex-soldier and now newest reporter on the Glasgow Gazette, has no shortage of material for his crime column.

But even Brodie baulks at his latest subject: a rapist who has been tarred and feathered by a balaclava-clad group. Brodie soon discovers a link between this horrific act and a series of brutal beatings.

As violence spreads and the body count rises, Brodie and advocate Samantha Campbell are entangled in a web of deception and savagery. Brodie is swamped with stories for the Gazette. But how long before he and Sam become the headline?

My Take

#2 in the Douglas Brodie series takes place a couple of years after the first. The years following World War II are not the golden days everyone had hoped for. Large areas of Glasgow are scheduled for regeneration but with the plans and the money comes corruption at city hall. 

Many returned soldiers have been unable to find jobs and indeed have been treated badly. Not only that, they can see others profiting by crime. Cases go to court and burglars, murderers, and others are being acquitted for lack of evidence, or through sloppy policing. The result is the rise of vigilantes taking matters into their own hands, and dispensing their own form of justice.

Douglas Brodie, working for The Gazette, becomes the target for one of these groups, The Marshall's, to get their message across.

I think I enjoyed this novel every bit as much as the first in the series. The main characters are strong, the settings feel historically authentic, and the tension ramps up as the story progresses.

My rating: 4.8

I have also reviewed 4.8, THE HANGING SHED

About the author
Gordon Ferris is an ex-techy in the Ministry of Defence and an ex-partner in one of the Big Four accountancy firms. Maybe that's where he gets his interest in spies and crooks. He writes about the important things in life: conflicted heroes and headstring women embroiled in tangled tales of life, love and death. He is the author of the No. 1 bestselling eBook The Hanging Shed. 

Review: THE HANGING SHED, Gordon Ferris

• Kindle (Amazon)
• File Size: 512 KB
• Print Length: 314 pages
• Publisher: Corvus (March 1, 2011)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
• Language: English
• ASIN: B004G5YVT6
• Source: I bought it

Synopsis (Amazon)

Glasgow, 1946: The last time Douglas Brodie came home it was 1942 and he was a dashing young warrior in a kilt. Now, the war is over but victory's wine has soured and Brodie's back in Scotland to try and save childhood friend Hugh Donovan from the gallows. Everyone thought Donovan was dead, shot down in the war. Perhaps it would have been kinder if he had been killed. The man who returned was unrecognizable: mutilated, horribly burned. Donovan keeps his own company, only venturing out for heroin to deaden the pain of his wounds. When a local boy is found raped and murdered, there is only one suspect...
Donovan claims he's innocent but a mountain of evidence says otherwise. Despite the hideousness of the crime, ex-policeman Brodie feels compelled to try and help his one-time friend. Working with Donovan's advocate Samantha Campbell, Brodie trawls both the mean streets of the Gorbals and the green hills of western Scotland in their search for the truth. What they find is an unholy alliance of church, police and Glasgow's deadliest razor gang, happy to slaughter to protect their dark secrets. As time runs out for the condemned man, and the tally of murdered innocents rises, Brodie reverts to his wartime role as a trained killer. It's them or him.

My take

The book begins strongly with a description of Barlinnie Prison in Glasgow. Douglas Brodie is hurtling through the night to Glasgow on the Royal Scot. It is April 1946 and he has had a phone call from a friend he thought had died in the war. The friend is in desperate trouble, convicted of murdering a young boy, and scheduled for the hanging shed.

I warmed to Brodie straight away and I liked the way the author revealed his background little by little.
I also liked the authentic feel of the setting. So much of the detail of like in post-war Glasgow rang true and had resonances for me.

I also liked Gordon Ferris' style of writing. Here are some snippets I marked:

I fondly inspected the building. There seemed to be no bomb damage, and the two statues stood proudly in their niches along the line of the parapet. Stepping inside to the solid carpentry and shining counter was like coming home. I told the librarian I was researching a book about the trial and wanted access to the newspapers for the period of the trial and one month either side. So from November 1945 through to today, 4 April 1946.

and

That got a laugh from her, and then she was as good as her word. A great plateful of powdered-egg omelette, black pudding and tattie scones was served up with a flourish. She must have used up her ration coupons for a week. She sat there sipping her own tea, elbows on the table watching me proprietorially as I devoured the lot. Toast was grilled and buttered for me. All I had to do was wash it down with the steady flow of life-giving tea.

and

It was a typical two-roomed house. Kitchen cum living room and good room beyond. The curtain was pulled across the bed in the wall in the living room. We sat at a tiny wooden table with a blue and white checked waxcloth covering. The place was heavy with smoke.

So I was hooked almost from the beginning.
THE HANGING SHED also establishes a partnership between Brodie and defence advocate Samantha Campbell and both characters come alive.

My rating: 4.8

I'll be looking for more by Gordon Ferris, in particular the next in the Brodie series BITTER WATER.

THE HANGING SHED was shortlisted for the CWA Ellis Peters Award for Historical crime fiction in 2011.

About the Author

Gordon Ferris has been a computer programmer for the RAF, an executive in the Ministry of Defence and a consultancy partner in the banking division of Price Waterhouse. Maybe that's where he gets his interest in guns and crooks. Gordon grew up in Scotland and now flits between London and Switzerland.
Author website.