The Unburied Dead by Douglas Lindsay

The following review is the first one written for a book read on my Kindle proper. The Unburied dead is another book published by Blasted Heath.

The Unburied Dead by Douglas Lindsay. 2012. Blasted Heath. Epub £1.99. ISBN 978-1-908688-17-0.

This was my first read of a Douglas Lindsay book that had nothing to do with his hilariously over-the-top demon barber, Barney Thompson. To be brief; well written and superbly in-your-face, this chilling tale is even better than Lindsay’s earlier works and I am fast becoming a fan of anything he produces.

Set in Glasgow, the plot switches between two separate stories. In one, we are introduced to the thoughts and actions of an unknown serial killer, who is obsessed with his former girlfriend and kills her repeatedly, believing his victims to be her. The deaths are brutally violent and send shock waves through the community.

In the second story, we follow the path of a down-beat police officer, DC Thomas Hutton. A former soldier who has seen active service and is still very much traumatized by it all, Hutton goes through women like nobody’s business, falling in love and getting married, then divorced, with alarming regularity. He is disillusioned with his job and seems to merely go through the motions, fuelled by his vodka and his loneliness.

It is just before Christmas and Hutton, along with most of his colleagues, is mixing merriment and gift-buying with this case, in order to try and catch the killer before he strikes again. While he is busy and pre-occupied, with his mind on his women – both past and present – more than on his work, he accidently stumbles across several clues that could indict keys members of the local constabulary, as well as identify the killer. Hutton’s Christmas ‘holiday’ is not that merry, to say the least, and he ends up trudging through the snow on Hogmanay in a last-ditch attempt to sort everything out, only to discover that things are far, far worse than he could ever imagine.

Lindsay is one of those talented authors that can mix dry humour with dark and bloody violence. He can get into your head and distract you from yourself, as well as make you chuckle. The short length of his stories are perfect for me just now, in my ‘New to Kindle’ state, as they are a fairly quick read, and, as a result, I am not the slightest bit concerned about how long I will be kept away from my pile of beloved paperbacks!