Long Time Dead
"...a dark, personal journey with convincingly raw emotions and a protagonist who is digging beyond rock bottom."
Synopsis:
Gus Dury is back on the drink. Big time. While in hospital after a hit-and-run accident, his best friend, Hod, asks him to investigate the ritual, on-campus hanging of an Edinburgh University student. The official verdict is death by erotic asphyxiation but the victim's mother, a high-profile actress is not buying it and she has promised a large reward.
Gus is desperate for money so he goes undercover at the university, taking a janitor's job, and soon uncovers a similar ritualistic hanging which took place in the 70s. Few of the students are prepared to talk about it - until another one of their group turns up dead by the same method. But Gus now moves into very dangerous waters as he begins to discover what and who is really behind it all - and he becomes the next target for the executioner.
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Review:
This is the fourth outing for Gus Dury and you'd think after the events that rolled out in outing 3 (Loss) that Gus would be getting a break. Let me disabuse you of that notion because in Long Time Dead, Gus gets an even harder time. Alcohol abuse is a standard in crime fiction for a number of reasons, but Tony Black gives it a depth and a veracity that makes it rise above cliché. This time Gus is not just troubled by his drinking, he is on a rapid decline to the morgue. All of which, of course, hampers him in his investigations. Dury is his usual highly focused, determined self and displaying a delicious cynicism at 21st century life that had me cheering, the plot rips along at a fair lick and the secondary characters are a delightfully hard bunch of individuals. Be warned though, if you are looking for some light reading Long Time Dead is not it. What it is though is a dark, personal journey with convincingly raw emotions and a protagonist who is digging beyond rock bottom.