Jason Chambers: Welsh first introduced Scottish detective Ray Lennox in Filth, a darkly comic novel about crooked Edinburgh cop Bruce Robertson’s unraveling, In Crime, he relaxes the debauchery (well, a little) and focuses on Lennox – a young detective in a spiral of his own. His career and life in disarray after a case gets disastrously out of control, Ray flies to Florida with his fiance Trudi to relax and plan their wedding. Haunted by unexplained demons, he quickly disappears into the seedy Miami underground, binging on booze and coke, and partying with a strange set of dismal and threatening characters. Sobriety and a protective instinct take control when he finds himself in between a 10-year old girl and a circle of organized pedophiles, and they take off on a road trip to a safe haven.
Welsh alternates between moving the story forward in Florida and exploring the depths of Ray’s backstory in flashbacks set in Scotland. One of the strengths to the story is the way Welsh shifts narrative from third person present while in Florida to second person past in the flashbacks, creating an exceptionally discomforting and uneven tone, coinciding with the intense meltdown Ray undergoes.
The Scottish sections of Crime left me a bit cold in comparison with the frenzy of action and emotion that drive the action in the Florida chapters, and the ending was a bit pat for my tastes, leaving me wanting more. That being said, the shift in tones in the novel was an interesting experiment, and Ray’s desperate trip into Miami’s dark corners, along with the surprising, but deeply flawed hero he becomes, is compelling. Welsh retains his skill with dialogue and raw prose, but his story doesn’t quite hit the mark.
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