THE FRACTURE

Ex–Glasgow copper Blake Glover, back in his depressing hometown of Fraserburgh driving a cab, finds himself in the middle of three different mysteries.

The first involves Ray Cocklestone, whom Glover dropped off near the beach of Kinnaird Head a few minutes before the man drowned himself. Why did an aging farmer feel such a need to die? Was he simply unable to recover from his grief over the death of his only son in a car crash in Bulgaria three weeks earlier? The second comes into Glover’s view when he thinks he’s spotted a crack in the late Margaret Duthie’s coffin that the gravediggers seem unusually eager to conceal as she’s buried. How could the solid oak coffin Davie Duthie bought for his mother have been damaged so quickly and easily? Glover’s participation in both these cases is incidental, but he’s front and center when Mitch Campbell, another ex-cop whose friendship with Glover ended when he started to deal drugs on a grand scale, summons him to the prison visiting room and informs him that he plans to reduce his impending sentence by implicating Glover in his schemes unless Glover does him a little favor that turns into a big mess. Will “the Ray Riddle, the Coffin Curiosity and the Mitch Madness” turn out to be connected to each other? Against all odds, they will, and in a way that will work the seemingly impossible task of making Glover’s disillusionment with Fraserburgh even deeper than before.

Cry’s businesslike pace, which gathers steam as his hero moves from reflecting to reaping, makes every fracture worthwhile.