The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter by Malcolm Mackay

Author : Malcolm Mackay
Title : The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter
Published : 2013
Publisher : Pan
Pages : 336
Genre : Crime Thriller

      A twenty-nine-year-old man lives alone in his Glasgow flat. The telephone rings; a casual conversation, but behind this a job offer. The clues are there if you know to look for them. He is an expert. A loner. Freelance. Another job is another job, but what if this organization wants more? A meeting at a club. An offer. A brief. A target: Lewis Winter. It's hard to kill a man well. People who do it well know this. People who do it badly find out the hard way. The hard way has consequences.

     There is a lot to be said for skimming the shelves of your local charity shop. If not for a rainy afternoon I would never have come to have a copy of The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter in my hands. When it comes to crime fiction Noir seems to be a style that at least for the moment has taken a back seat. For me, this is a great shame as it is how I came back to books in my late teens. There is something to be said for a book where there really is no clear good person in the whole plot. When the heroes of these stories are just as murky as the worlds they inhabit. And while the Scandinavians have there own take on it it is always one step revoked from its source.  For me, there is something in the British and American noir novels that takes me to another place. 

     Mackay delivers a hero very much in this vein of those greats that have come before. This time in the form of a Hitman trying to work out the best way to move on not only with his life but his chosen profession. Whilst not as old as some of the contemporary anti-hero he has still been through a lot by the time we come to meet him. This is a man who struggles on daily bass with who and what he is. He is someone who has had to set himself some hard rules to live by for fear of spiraling ever more out of control. I can't really say that as a person I particularity liked him and I'm sure if ever I was to meet him the feeling would be mutual. But he does give good narrative and what more could I ask for. As for the rest of this mottle cast, I would level the same barrel at them. This is a world inhabited by gangsters and crooked cops. Each and everyone looking for there own cut at the cost of anyone who will get in there way. 

     This is a book that goes on at a steady pace, Whilst we follow our hero on his mission to make sure Lewis Winter's is killed right he takes the time to fill us in on the rules of his profession and the pitfalls that will lead the lesser man to end up behind bars. In its own way, this is a quirky tale of a man trying to get from point A to Point B without getting his head blown off. It was also a story that got under my skin very quickly. It took me back in part to those books that I have so loved in this genre before. A dark and bloody world that sits one step of the main road of our own. It is a rabbit hole that is easy to fall down. I have known a few people on the outskirts of this world and for me the characters Mackay has created fit in my mind with those I have known. I would point out none of them have been hitmen just to clarify by there is a way they carry themselves a certain sense of not giving a dame about the regular people like you and me. As for the narrative, it's self it feels to me like the author took his time plotting each point for maximum effect. It is far to easy to get sucked in and despite not really liking our hero on a personal level I still want him to make it our the other side. 

     This is a book that steps across that line to the darker side of our world. It lives in alleys ways and that pub you're been told never to go in for fear of getting a good kicking. It is a book that I enjoyed a great deal and ended up being more psychological than I had expected. Where you might expect blood being cast across the streets of Glasgow what you get is fear and intimidation.