Maureen Myant (2022) The Confession.

Maureen Myant is on a roll four or five of the same books (around 80 000 words a year) same characters, Glasgow Southside Series. I read around a quarter of her first novel, The Search, which I take was her doctoral dissertation in Creative Writing from Glasgow Uni. It was set in Poland, 1942. OKish, I won’t finish reading it.

Habeas corpus, you shall have the body.

Police procedural centred on (the story being told mainly from point of view) DI Mark Nicholson. The backdrop of his caustic relationship with DCI Alex Scrimgeour (great choice for a name with Dickensian connotations) but he owes his boss a favour. He lied for him and saved his police career. His fucked up family and love life in the background and foreground.

The body is Julie Campbell. Music teacher and a middle-class woman found dead at her desk in middle-class land in the South Side of Glasgow. Suicide. Messy not because of the pills she’s taken. But because nobody noticed she was gone. A neighbour reported a stink. She’s bloated and the flies have had a feast. Usually, filed away by the police and forgotten. But a PC pointed out to his superior officer, he should take a dekko at what she’d written.

DI Mark Nicholson doesn’t know what to make of it. Her laptop contains a confession to five murders. She mocks the police for being unable to stop her or spot her because she doesn’t fit into the usual mould of serial killer. The Confession in the title. Is she a fantasist?

Does all the things graduate creative writing students should do. Grabs the reader’s attention. Twists the expected narrative and takes it in a new and unexpected direction.

Many books have a great start but some get lost and fall into the abyss of not knowing and faltering on. Nicholson follows where the leads take him and it’s uncomfortably close to home. I always like books about or set in Glasgow. So that suits both of us. Read on.