Book Review of Family Man - The Scotsman
Posted by colin.b on Fri, 19 Jun 2026
Hey everyone.
I've been so chuffed with reaction my new novel 'Family Man' has received. This is a book review from The Scotsman Newspaper.
Like Many Scottish writers before him, Colin Burnett risks being mistaken for some kind of gritty social realist, simply because his Edinburgh stories are written in an edgy street Scots, and are often set against working-class backgrounds, from fortified pubs in Leith and Granton to grubby blocks of flats in Wester Hailes.
In fact, though - like Irvine Welsh before him - Burnett is a fancy rococo stylist, who takes a stark vision of life among Edinburgh’s leading gangsters and criminal businesses, and both exaggerates and stylises its violence like a North Edinburgh Tarantino, and also adds an edge of rich comedy and wild social fantasy.
So in this third book of linked short stories in Burnett’s Aldo series (following A Working Class State Of Mind in 2019, and Who’s Aldo? in 2022), we find his hero Aldo - once a mere foot-soldier of gangsterism, but now the leader of Edinburgh’s most successful criminal enterprise - living a comfortable middle-class life with his gorgeous and much-loved wife Roxy, his teenage stepdaughter Jennifer, and, most importantly, his dog Brucie, whom he loves more than any other creature on earth, and views both as a baby son, and as a higher being and moral mentor.
The scope for comedy and fantasy is obviously immense, particularly in the episodes involving Brucie, whose every word Aldo and his associates claim to understand. Most of the time, though, Aldo is busy in his macho world of violence, fighting off challenges to his drug-trafficking empire from other gangs, Irish, Mexican, or Colombian; and the story ends with the kind of TV-series cliff-hanger that promises another book of Aldo, yet to come.
How much readers enjoy these stories will depend on how well they cope with Burnett’s more or less all-male world, with extreme violence always (allegedly) directed at those who richly deserve it, and, most immediately, with Burnett’s elaborate written street Scots, which - as the late and great Allan Massie observed of the second Aldo book - comes so brilliantly off the page when read aloud that it raises questions about whether Burnett might not find his true vocation in writing for stage or screen.
Even on the page, though, the complex written language he develops provides rich entertainment, with Burnett - for example - going to extraordinary byzantine lengths to avoid the boring words “say” and “said”; and taking us on a linguistic roller coaster ride that is clearly part of a mission to mythologise and style up the landscape of modern urban Scotland as boldly as Welsh, John Byrne or Alasdair Gray before him. And if Burnett’s vision is more comedic, more genre-driven and lighter in touch than any of those, it still has its own resonance - particularly for those who enjoy the intricate multiple personalities of Scotland’s capital city, and the odd fantastical variation on them, elaborated with energy, humour and flair.
Family Man: The third book of Aldo can be ordered from Amazon, Waterstones, Blackwells and many others.
Also, for a brief time the second book the kindle version of Who's Aldo? can be purchased for the bargain price of 99p.
Link to 99p, Who's Aldo kindle offer: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Whos-Aldo-Sequel-Working-Class/dp/1913836355/ref=pd_bxgy_d_sccl_1/525-0614502-3931322?pd_rd_w=wIZnk&content-id=amzn1.sym.ec630614-3f9e-4b7f-ba9a-fe89f8e4113f&pf_rd_p=ec630614-3f9e-4b7f-ba9a-fe89f8e4113f&pf_rd_r=ZF6K2QY88W27BDWKAZH8&pd_rd_wg=hfH6t&pd_rd_r=61d0f841-656c-44ce-8465-aad286355cd8&pd_rd_i=1913836355&psc=1
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Comments
Great review. You shuold add
Great review. You shuold add a lnk to your post.
Thanks
Thanks, I've added the links, good shout