The hour of the murderer

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The Murderer's Hour is a 2006 crime novel by Stuart MacBride published by HarperCollins UK ; the original English title is Dying Light . The novel was translated by Andreas Jäger and published in 2007 as a German first edition by Goldmann Verlag . It is the second novel in the Logan MacRae series after The Dark Waters of Aberdeen .

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It has been some time since Logan MacRae caught the child killer at Rubislaw Quarry - a quarry in Aberdeen . He is now in a relationship with his WPC colleague Jackie Watson; Professionally, however, things are not going according to plan for the Grampian Police investigator in Aberdeen. When he followed up an anonymous tip, a raid under his leadership got completely out of hand and his colleague PC Maitland has been fighting for his life in the intensive care unit ever since. Because of this incident, the internal supervision is again on his neck and on top of that, he is transferred to the DI Steel "failure club" by the investigative team from DI Insch.

The main focus of the criminal investigation department is on the "Shore Lane Stalker". This perpetrator brutally beats prostitutes from Shore Lane, a small alley directly on Aberdeen Harbor, to death and then puts them on the street without clothes. In addition, Logan MacRae has to look for an arsonist who barricades the doors and windows of houses, sets the buildings on fire and watches as the residents burn in their houses without a chance of escape. The arsonist is one of the two henchmen who Malcom MacLennan - called "Malk the Knife" - sent from Edinburgh to Aberdeen to expand his sphere of influence to the north of Scotland . These cut off several fingers of a reporter and try to take drastic measures to pull the local dealers on their side or permanently. And housewife Aisla Cruikshank reports her husband Gavin as missing. For Logan it is no coincidence that the man's corpse is "disposed of" in the same way as the torso of a Labrador a few days before : in a suitcase in the forest, but clearly visible. While Aisla Cruikshank first tries to cast suspicion on her violent neighbor, Logan recognizes inconsistencies in a tiny detail of her story and convicts her as a true murderer. And finally, he can also employ the “Shore Lane Stalker” who actually works for a car dealership.

Reviews

“The ugly should be called ugly, yes, even more, in its ugliness, because it is ugly. Looking away doesn't change that, and that's why the narrator doesn't look away either. "

- Ekkehard Knörer

“The body count in the McRae novels is already unusually high for a British thriller of the classical school, but the Scots have been known for centuries as a warlike people and not very squeamish. The friends of the explicitly disgusting are once again well served, [...] seldom have dissecting scenes been staged so suitably for Gor as at the hour of the murderer. "

- Michael Drewniok

General

Like MacBride's first novel in the Logan MacRae series , The Dark Waters of Aberdeen , The Hour of the Murderer is set in the present at the time the book was written. This novel is also mainly told from the point of view of Logan MacRae, MacBride only deviates from it in a few passages. The brief introduction and other fires are described from the point of view of the arsonist, there are some passages from the point of view of prostitutes in Shore Lane and Aisla Cruickshank.

Unlike MacBride's first book, The Murderer's Hour takes place in the summer. However, continuous rain and cloudy skies, despite some rays of sunshine, create a similarly gloomy atmosphere as in winter. In the afterword, MacBride thanks the Aberdeen Tourist Office for not lynching him after the publication of his first book, and cites as "consolation" that the new book will be set in the summer.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Calling the ugly ugly on perlentaucher.de, accessed on June 22, 2019
  2. ^ The hour of the murderer on krimi-couch.de, accessed on June 22, 2019
  3. ↑ Stuart MacBride: The Hour of the Murderer, Wilhelm Goldmann Verlag Munich, 1st edition German first publication 2007, p. 477