For example the murder happens Saturday night (You can almost hear the Bay City Rollers singing along in every description of the disco clothes the young people were wearing). The body is discovered sometime midday on Sunday. Laidlaw (that’s the detective!) comes to see the body and does a couple of things and then goes home to his family to rest up to start the case on Monday morning. Everything had changed. You could walk for as long as you liked in this city. It wouldn't know you. You could call every part of it by name. But it wouldn't answer.St. George's Cross was only cars, inventing destinations for the people in them. The cars controlled the people. Sauchiehall Street was a graveyard of illuminated tombstones. Buchanan Street was an escalator bearing strangers. So he turned to the head of the Women’s Royal Naval Service, Vera Laughton Matthews, who seized her moment.

Stunning. Possibly the best-written crime novel I've read. It continually astounded me with its depth and surprising metaphors. There are noir tropes here, their meaning and resonance vastly amplified; I said similar about Ian Rankin a few months ago when I first read him, but this was like Rankin tripled, quadrupled - this, published in 1977, was one of the inspirations for Rebus. Told that the range of a U-boat torpedo was about one mile, Jean Laidlaw had a lightbulb moment – convoys were miles across. In his compelling novel, LAIDLAW, McIlvanney lays bare the soul of Glasgow, capturing every nuance of its many voices

From time to time, Laidlaw gets to make his views known directly, as he engages with Harkness in lively debates about the role of the policeman in society, about ethics and about personal responsibility.

Sometimes, rarely, the sadness and the cynicism are relieved by the sort of self-deprecating humour the Scots are so fond of: But the War Office was in such denial. The Wrens were never taken in under military law, which gave Vera a certain free hand. She was queen of her own castle.”It's doubtful I would be a crime writer without the influence of McIlvanney's Laidlaw." - Ian Rankin En esta novela aparece el cuerpo de una mujer joven en un parque de Glasgow. Enseguida conoceremos al autor porque lo que interesa en esta historia es conocer el entorno de la víctima y del asesino. El odio religioso protestantes/católicos, el deseo de venganza o la homosexualidad, que en esa época estaba muy mal vista, forman parte de la trama. Other Wrens offered to relieve her of monitoring the Oribi, but Christian refused. She adds: “Naturally, I needed to stay there.”