Crime

A Scottish cop fights Miami crime in Irvine Welsh's Crime

Like many readers my age, I've already read Trainspotting, Welsh's iconic novel on heroin, but I  haven't read any of his other works. This book is a spin-off of another novel, Filth. In Crime (W.W. Norton, 2008), cop, ex-alcoholic, and rough-around-the-edges anti-hero Ray Lennox has just been prescribed a Miami Beach vacation by his boss after nabbing a disturbingly efficient pedophile and murderer back in Scotland. Despite catching the killer, Lennox is guilt-stricken that he was unable to save the last victim, a young girl named Britney who disappeared on her way to school. Depressed and full of self-regret, the world through Lennox's eyes is ugly–his plane sure to plummet, his fiancee, Trudi, an ugly caricature of a wedding-obsessed bitch, and Miami is a sleaze pit. Pre-trip, Lennox decided to only take a few anti-depressants with him, a decision he's now regretting as Britney's death takes over his mind. His anxiety leads to a fight with his fiancee, and sends him sliding into a drinking and cocaine binge with the nightmarish and drugged women he meets, Robyn and Starry. Through his cocaine haze (done off of the cover of Trudi's copy of Perfect Bride!) he manages to save Tianna, Robyn's daughter, from being raped at the party. Tianna becomes a way to succeed where he tragically failed with Britney, and his quest to save her draws him into a disturbing and seedy crime ring.

Crime is a hard book to get into. At first Lennox's depression and anger tints everything, and the thought of reading almost 350 pages about what seem to be truly despicable (and, at first, uninteresting) people seems daunting and frankly, not worth the trouble. I never read Filth, so I have no previous attachment to Ray Lennox, and he seemed to be nothing more than a depressing stereotype: Hardened cop who's seen too much. With the introduction of Tianna, the first person Welsh allows Ray to sympathize for and the true heart of the novel, the other characters begin to soften as well. But, I still found myself almost halfway through the book before I began to really root for Lennox. The ending, when you get there, is a satisfying conclusion to this gritty story of redemption, if not the most surprising.

This book isn't quite new–it came out in 2008–so it's already out in paperback. You can get it here.

You can also check out the book trailer for Crime here.