I have a habit that annoys the Hell out of my wife. (Only one ? That's probably a very conservative estimate.). Reading one book at a time isn't enough for me. This also annoyed my family even before I got married but it's just something I've always done. I'm also very relucatant to get rid of books. Add that to the list of things that irritate Anne.
In any one week I've probably got anything up to 5 books on the go. Most often they're of different genres but this week, in addition to Stephen Budiansky's "The Truth About Dogs" (non-fiction), Martin Walker's "Bruno, Chief of Police" ( a charming, laid-back "police procedural" set in rural France) and "Germania" by Simon Winder (history / travel and humour in one entertaining package) I'm also reading two "private eye" novels set, unusually, in my own fair city of Glasgow.
The first is "Lennox" by the excellent Craig Russell who has also written the very enjoyable Jan Fabel police series set in modern Hamburg. This is a departure from police procedural territory and follows a traditional P.I./ noir approach. The first person narrator is the eponymous hero, a Canadian who finds himself employed as an "enquiry agent" in 1950s Glasgow.
"The Stone Gallows" also references the hero's name in the title. Cameron Stone is a washed-up ex-cop who is struggling to pull his life back together after being involved in a car chase which resulted in two deaths. He has gone down the route of booze and anti-depressants but finds hhimself running errands for a private detective agency.
It may sound like the routine basis of many other hard-boiled PI stories but this one has a particularly good grasp of Glasgow culture and geography. In places it bubbles with black humour. One scene set in a hospital and describing a nurse's routine on a rather strange night shift rang a lot of bells for me. It's pitch perfect and I wasn't surprised to read that the author, C. David Ingram ,after legal training and being involved in the debt collection business, works as a nurse. There's a good, short interview at Books Monthly. Future entries in the series will be a must for me.
Pretty typical, you wait years for a hardboiled, Glaswegian P.I. to arrive then two come along at once. Just like the local buses. Both made me think of the first Glasgow-based P.I. I had the good fortune to encounter : the meteoric legend that was Daniel Pike.
Pike was created by the great Scottish author and playwright Eddie Boyd. The character was introduced under a different name, Daniel Britt, in a BBC series called "Menace".This showcased thrillers and dramatic pieces in the same way that "the Beeb's" more successful and better known "Comedy Playhouse" ran pilots for comedy shows.
The "Menace" pilot, a story called "Good Morning Yesterday", was successful enough to launch a series. I don't remember much of the plot but one scene sticks in my mind. Britt and his client are about to take a beating from a group of local gang members ( the "young team" as they're "affectionately" known) when a wee Glasgow "wummin" wearing a headscarf scatters the gangsters with a bash from her shopping bag. She also lets them know that she'll be telling their mothers about what they've been getting up to.
When the spin-off series arrived it was called "The View from Daniel Pike". Britt had been transformed in name only. There's more than a few honourable precedents for that. Philip Marlowe had a prototype called John Dalmas and Ormond Sacker went on to get his MB/ChB as well as a more renowned, though plainer, alias.
One of the advantages of Daniel's new surname was that it allowed him to make his regular rejoinder when someone would ask how to spell it: "Pike. Same as the fish".
Roddy McMillan, who played Pike, was one of Scotland's great, popular actors. He was also a playwright and had great success with "The Bevellers". Among Glaswegians he's probably best remembered for the long-running comedy series "The Vital Spark" based on the stories of the unforgettable Neil Munro.
Among my own memories of Roddy McMillan is a haunting piece he did for one of BBC Scotland's New Year (Hogmanay) shows. Usually these shows try to be "traditional" in an excrutiating way ,like a shortbread tin stuffed with whisky-soaked haggis and wrapped in tartan ribbons. McMillan was allowed to break the mould by reading a short story called "The City Collector" direct to camera. I can only presume that he wrote the piece and I wish that I could find a copy. It was based on a whimsical,but chilling,notion ; "What if the City Collector ,a title that appeared on bills sent out by Glasgow Corporation, was actually an entity that collected long vanished streets and people?". Like so many of the things that impressed me on TV and in the cinema as a youngster it was heartbreakingly simple and superbly well done.
I was in my mid-teens when "The View" made its debut just as I was discovering the likes of Chandler and Mickey Spillane. T.V. was pretty much saturated with detectives at the time but here was one based in the Dear Green Place. At school we talked about the shows with relish and some of the lines stick with me to this day.
Pike (to an inhospitable barman) :"I know how you could sell more beer in this pub.".
Barman : "Oh aye ? How's that then?"
Pike: "Fill the bloody glasses".
McMillan carried it all off with style. He was a tough guy of the same stripe as James Cagney or Humphrey Bogart but Pike was obviously sophisticated. He had a girlfriend who sang in a cool jazz club after all. The exterior of the club was mocked up in Park Circus and I'm still enough of an "eastender" at heart to feel that I'm visiting another world when I visit there on Mondays for my German class.
Funny how writing things down can jog the memory. I must dig out the novelisation of the series, actually a collection of 5 or 6 novellas, written by the late , great Bill Knox and based on Boyd's teleplays. I have a fair idea of where it is but maybe I should leave it there for another few weeks. Three PI books at once would be excessive, even for me.
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