Laidlaw (A Harvest Book)

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Summary: Travellers and Tourists
Review: "Think of it this way" says Laidlaw the detective, "There are tourists and travellers. Tourists spend their lives doing a Cook's Tour of their own reality. Ignoring their slums. Travellers make the journey more slowly, in greater detail. Mix with the natives . . . They've become terrifyingly real for themselves. Their lives are no longer a hobby." Laidlaw is forever trying to understand the "why". His attempts to do so and almost overwhelming compassion are two of the best things about this book. Another is McIlvanney's depiction of the tough side of Glasgow. Add to that a compelling prose style, and the novel is hard to beat.

"Laidlaw" won the Silver Dagger Award for 1977 and an earlier, non-detective novel won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award. A later novel, "The Papers of Tony Veitch" also won a Silver Dagger.

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Summary: laidlaw
Review: A young woman, Jennifer Lawson has been found brutally murdered. She has been strangled and then sexually assaulted. Her body has been dumped in Kelvingrove Park in the western part of Glasgow. The author also tells the reader who the killer is and hints at a motive for the killing. It remains for Detective Inspector to find the killer from a confusing set of clues he gleams from the victim's family and relatives and their friends. Laidlaw is not a conventional cop of the Glasgow police force. Indeed, he draws clear parallels between himself and his associates. Of one named Milligan, Laidlaw makes the following observation. "I think false certainties are what destroy us. And Milligan's full of them. He's a walking absolute. What's murder but a willed absolute, an invented certainty? An existential failure of nerve. What we shouldn't do is compound the felony in our reaction to it. And that's what people keep doing. Faced with the enormity, they lose their nerve, and where they should see a man, they make a monster. It's a social industry. And Milligan's one of its entrepreneurs." What keeps emerging from this book is the intricate understanding the author McIlvanney imparts about the characters that populate this book. In this next passage, Laidlaw and his assistant Detective Constable Harkness are questioning Mr. and Mrs. Stanley, friends of the murder victim and her family. Laidlaw discerned the tension between husband and wife, the former reluctant to come forward with information, the latter determined to do so. The Stanley's stared across at each other. "Laidlaw and Harkness sat silent. It wasn't the kind of look to interfere in. That stare was about twenty years of marriage and it was carrying more complicated traffic between them than the M1 (motorway). It was no longer about a dead girl or policemen's questions. It was about other kinds of death. It was about how much a woman had never got out of a relationship and the decency she had maintained in spite of it. It was about how much a man had hidden from promises he perhaps didn't even know he had made. It was about pride kept and pride lost." This book is also about Glasgow, the other city in Scotland that has always lived in the shadow of its far more cosmopolitan sister Edinburgh (pronounced "Ed-in-borough"). Glasgow was the unruly, snotty-nosed sibling that was always dirty, while its sister always managed to appear spotless and polite. Laidlaw and Harkness are at the Glasgow Cross, where a number of roads converge: Gallowgate, Trongate, High Street, and the London Road. They are "on the site of the old Tolbooth-a kind of midget tower with a Balustrade at the top and above that the figure of a unicorn." "Harkness read the words carved on the stone: 'Nemo me impune lacessit...' "No one assails me with impunity," Laidlaw said. "wha daur meddle wi me?...I like the civic honesty of that," Laidlaw was smiling. "That's the wee message carved on the heart of Glasgow. Visitors are advised not to be cheeky." The book is also filled with the Glasgow the "patter." Laidlaw and Harkness are waiting in the canteen of a print shop to interview a witness when a worker comes in to have a cigarette. After some banter with Laidlaw and Harkness, he tells them a story about the walk-in cupboard near where they are all standing. "This is gospel. No' last week, but the week before. Big Aly Simpson. Bloke in the work. He's fond o' his nookie an' that, ye know? Me. Ah'd rather hiv a fish-supper. Anyway, there's nane o' us perfect. Dinner-time (lunch time). The horn goes. Back tae the galleys. Except Big Aly an Jinty. Jinty's a big lassie that works wan o' the machines. Well, she's no' that big, but everybody's big tae me. Ah yince broke ma leg fa'lling aff the kerb. But she's gemme. So the two o' them wait in the canteen here an' lock the door. Jist gettin'doon tae it. When they hear somebody tryin' the door. Then there's the voices talkin' about gettin' the key. Panic stations. Big Aly's a mairrit man. Likes tae think that everybody else's heid buttons up the back. So he hides in the press there. Jinty sorts herself an' sterts yawnin' an' that. Goes tae the door an' opens it. 'Ah must've fell asleep,' she says, blinkin' like Snow White. Well, Wullie Anderson comes in. Whaur dae ye think is the first place he makes fur? The press there. Tae get a new brush-heid. Opens the dorr. There's Big Aly. Standin; like Count Dracula. Ye widny credit it. Know whit Big Aly says? Cool as ye like. "Is this where ye get the bus for Maryhill.' An' that's the truth." If you're fond of book about detectives who are complex and analytical, and caught up in the underworld they confront everyday, Laidlaw if meant for you. The main character Laidlaw is at odds with the police force he serves and is torn between a family and his work and too often the murderers and their victims take priority over wife and children. William McIlvanney is one of Scotland's best known writers. He is winner of the Whitbread Award for Fiction. The award is chosen by the Booksellers Association of Great Britain and Ireland, with funds provided by Whitbread Breweries.

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Summary: a traveller, not a tourist
Review: Detective inspector Jack Laidlaw walks the mean streets of Glasgow in the 70's; he also rides the bus and subway; he's a traveller, not a tourist, he explains to his partner harkness, through whose eyes we get to know Laidlaw. Jack Laidlaw is an unconventional cop, tough yes, but he is a philosopher, a political liberal, and a champion of the underdog; he is, like his creator McIlvanney, a humanist - everybody, no matter who or what they are, deserves respect as a human being. Another major character in this novel is the city of Glasgow itself, indeed in one passage a drunk man talks to the city. Anyone looking for a cop with a tough edge, but with human faults and failings need look no further than Laidlaw.

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Summary: Specialist Study of Literature
Review: I have recently read 'Laidlaw' as part of my higher English course and have found it a very enjoyable read if a little hard to write about. I find Laidlaw's character intriguing and I am planning to read the other novels by McIlvanney about D.I. Laidlaw. 'Laidlaw' is an excellant example of a detective novel and this is clear through the themes displayed throughout the novel. The themes are put across excellantly by the characters. I can relate to the setting very well because I live very close to Glasgow and know my way about very well.

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Summary: Laidlaw; The Man Who Can
Review: I read this book years ago for a school project. I loved the book at the time and still do rate it highly. I figured since none of you numpties reviewed it, I thought I would. It's about a very unorthodox Scottish policeman who's investigating a brutal murder. The book has a few twist and turns and seldom time for boredom. It's Brilllllliaaaaant...9/10!

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Summary: The Gift of The Gab
Review: McIlvanney's style of writing is slick. Laidlaw is the only one of this author's titles that I have read so far; and I have been duely impressed. The book follows an uncommon line of delivery. Instead of the usual who dunnit detective novel, Laidlaw is a why dunnit story. McIlvanney's approach is refreshing, and prevents the book from being mistaken for another dimestore paperback lacking intrigue.

McIlvanney's Laidlaw needs no ambassador for its content. I agree with anyone who raves about this book. I question the integrity and reading capacity of anyone who does not find favour with this McIlvanney piece.

I cannot resist sharing my personal favorite aspect of Laidlaw. The way in which McIlvanney demonstrates his intimate relation to the characters he depicts, and intricate knowledge of how people think, and live, through his amazing usage of prose, left me thrilled, even agape. McIlvanney's writing kicks ass. He has the gift of the calligraphic gab which allows readers a vicariously Scottish experience that can be superimposed on any human experience.

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Summary: Breaking the mystery mould
Review: The story of Inspector Laidlaw and the complex murder investigation into a seemingly innocent young adults slaying, is one of many enthralling twists and turns which grasp and keep the readers attention until the very end. As an aspiring detective, I was interested in the strong morality of Laidlaw, and the compassion he felt for the "innocent until proven guilty".
The over twenty characters carefully articulated throughout Laidlaw prove most useful in representing the cheerless heart of urban Glasgow and its shady “underground” inhabitants. Most notably the depiction of women is not for the faint of heart. While McIlvanney displays women as adherent to their husband’s abuses and neglect, one cannot forget that without the strong negative depiction of women (such as Bud Lawson and Inspector Laidlaw’s wives) the reader would lack a sense of severity and compassion for characters such as Bud Lawson and Inspector Laidlaw.
William McIlvanney's Laidlaw, is able to tear down stereotypic views of a murder mystery "who done it" and replace it with a more complex psychological thriller "who done it? why? and what caused them to do it?" A definite must read for the literate and a great book to detour young girls from going to bars.

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Summary: Of Scottish Wit
Review: William McIlvanney presents this fictional narrative with a character so intelligently devised that it makes one wonder if its author is really Laidlaw. Laidlaw is a character that is great to follow throughout the book and leads the reader along as Watson did with Sherlock. The crime is murder. Murder of a young woman with a questionable past and Laidlaw manouvers his way through the inner societal workings of a Glasgow city to find the answers to the mystery of her untimely death. It's a great read, I highly recommend it.