The Sudden Arrival of Violence

Superb . . . Mackay is a true original, managing to conjure up a gripping new way of portraying city-noir. This, from a writer who has lived his whole life in far-off Stornoway, with only few short visits to the Glasgow he has so vividly created. He's no longer a rising star. He's risenMarcel Berlins, The Times

Reviewers often groan at the hyperbole with which publishers adorn new novels, but with Malcolm Mackay it is justified. His poetic titles (The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter and How a Gunman Says Goodbye) are infused with the sense of menace that is the sine qua non of the genre while tipping the wink that this is crime writing with ambition. The Sudden Arrival of Violence is the conclusion to Mackay's acclaimed Glasgow trilogy . . . The youthful Mackay has the command of a writer twice his age, and he has delivered a conclusion to his trilogy that is just as cohesive and forceful as his previous two books.Financial Times

The final novel in Malcolm MacKay's wonderful Glasgow trilogy . . . Gripping and vivid, with a labyrinthine plot involving double - and triple-crossing, The Sudden Arrival of Violence is told in a staccato, abbreviated style throughout. It's very difficult to keep this up, let alone do it well, but MacKay succeeds magnificently, and his third novel is well up to the high standard of its predecessorsGuardian

This is a story to take in one gulp . . . Malcolm Mackay's lauded Glasgow Trilogy pounds a familiar beat - fans of Taggart and William McIlvanney's Laidlaw will know it well - the Glasgow backbeat of chisel-faced hard men, organised crime, vengeance, punishment beatings, vicious killing . . . As you'd expect from a writer whose previous books have been listed for - and won - major crime fiction prizes, the prose is as terse as the tale is tense . . . Mackay grabs the action from the start . . . He completely commands his material as he steers it towards a dramatic culmination.Scotsman