The first book I read by Douglas Lindsay was THE CUTTING EDGE OF BARNEY THOMSON, which was published almost twenty years ago. That was a glorious second novel by this brilliantly inventive black comedy about a modern day, Glaswegian response to Sweeney Todd. Not for the fainthearted!
SONG OF THE DEAD shows how Lindsay has grown as a writer.
This is the first in a projected series involving DI Ben Westphall. Once a secret service agent from MI6, he had taken a change in career after a traumatic plane crash in which he nearly died, and which means he is incapable of flying. His past and training gives him insights into other people. In the book they come across at first as being inventive, much as a novelist will see a fleeting expression and place him or herself into their mind, imagining their thought processes. But in the case of Westphall this is bordering on the paranormal - BUT - whereas I found the concept of the Russian woman “seeing” an aura around other people, so she knew what they were thinking (described as synaesthesia, which I think is a bit of a stretch) in the Red Sparrow stories to be … well, silly, really - here in Lindsay’s latest, the use of the paranormal just works. It is better explained and depicted, and the scenes which lead to them … well, you need to read it.
The story is very compelling.
An English man, John Baden, walked into an Estonian police station. This is enough to make the police in the UK interested, since he was supposed to have died twelve years before. His body had been identified.
His story is horrific: he explains that he was kidnapped, held prisoner, and then used for organ harvesting for the last years. And he has the scars and internal tissue damage to prove it.
Westphall, reluctantly, agrees to travel to Estonia and interview the man. It is a suspicious tale, and he is doubtful, but soon other people who knew John Baden start dying, his girlfriend, his friends, relations, and it is clear that there is more to this man’s story.
But who is he? Baden was identified when he died, more than a decade ago. Who is this new man with the scars of many operations?
This is a superb new novel by Douglas Lindsay, written with great pace, but telling a story that is involving. You feel real sympathy for the characters and their predicaments. He is invented a wonderful new investigator in DI Westphall, and I will look forward to the next in this series.
