Nick Davies's Reviews > The Hangman's Song

I somehow read this one out of order with respect to the others in the DI McLean series, so was left slightly more confused than I might've been - though I did enjoy it quite a lot (four and a half out of five). I'm struggling exactly where to put it in relation to the others in the series that I have read.

As I've said before, I find Oswald's writing right up there with my favourites in the Scottish Crime genre, like Craig Robertson and Stuart MacBride. This series does however sometimes p*ss me off a little when the author chooses to make supernatural aspects key to the plot - I'm not sure whether it's completely necessary as without it we'd still have some very compelling and involving police procedural thrillers.

However, this novel - with McLean investigating a series of apparently linked suicides whilst coping with friction from people at work, and helping his colleague Emma recover from a serious amnesiac trauma episode - wasn't quite as unbelievable as some of the more paranormal aspects in t'other books. There's an important difference between 'relying on the supernatural to drive the plot' and 'relying on characters belief in the supernatural to drive the plot', and in the main my cynicism didn't stop me enjoying the book.