Praise for The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter
‘There aren’t too many crime novels that take the reader into the mind of a hit man, but Malcolm Mackay’s The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter, the first volume of a trilogy set in gangland Glasgow, does so with steely assurance ... Mackay writes in a staccato style, as befits the essentially brutal nature of his narrative . . . There is no appeal for sympathy, and that is refreshing in a genre that often has downright evil and sentimentalized goodness in conflict with each other until the inevitable, anticipated resolution. There’s no resolution, certainly no redemption, here. This is a truly exceptional debut’
Paul Bailey
‘The remarkable first book of a trilogy about Glasgow hit-man Calum MacLean, this marks the debut of 31-year-old Mackay . . . Mackay’s achievement is all the more stunning because drawing on his sublime imagination and innate empathy he has created a cast of characters so vivid - especially MacLean - that they live on in the memory long after the final page. There are Glasgow villains, bent policemen, a gangster’s moll with smarts to die for, not to mention the shabby drug-dealer Lewis Winter who has to die . . . ‘tartan noir’ will have a new star’
Daily Mail
‘A remarkably original debut ... a frighteningly plausible picture of Glasgow’s criminal underworld. The tension - and there’s a lot of it; this is a book that it would be hard not to finish in one sitting - builds as Calum’s plans near fruition, as Lewis goes about his life unaware, and as the realities of this dreary, dangerous world become clear . . . With small, quiet brushstrokes that it’s hard to see building up, Mackay turns each of his characters into real people - people with interests and back stories and all the small, inconsequential things that make up a life - and ends up with a wholly believable and unnerving portrait of organized crime’
Observer
‘The debut writer who is being hailed as tartan noir’s most authoritative and authentic new voice ... Mackay writes in a tough-guy style that is reminiscent of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett at their most hard-boiled... The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter has all the gangster genre’s classic ingredients: brutal, dramatic characters who instil fear, hard men dealing in the profits of human misery caused through lives ruined by drugs, the sort of villains who don’t want to know where all the bodies will be buried when other gangs muscle in on their turf’
Scotsman
‘Original... This is frills-free storytelling: the prose is clinical and un-adorned, the moralizing minimal, the narrative linear with no mystery element and nothing kept secret from the reader. Yet Mackay ratchets up the tension like a master, and his ability to create rounded characters makes his book, despite its dark subject matter, a breath of fresh air’
Daily Telegraph
‘On the evidence of his impressive debut Malcolm Mackay will no doubt be hailed as the newest member of the Tartan Noir community. Yet the feel and style of The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter is more American than Scottish ... a quietly absorbing gangland tale, full of moral ambiguities’
Marcel Berlins, The Times
‘From the outset Mackay’s debut makes it clear he has ambitions for this work that don’t fit the mould ... The first of a trilogy, The Necessary Death Of Lewis Winter would seem to take its inspiration less from Scottish noir antecedents, and more from American TV series such as Dexter, The Sopranos or Breaking Bad... impressively controlled and confident... Mackay knows how to pace a story . . . Measuring out its excitement more like a morphine drip than a hit, the author insidiously builds up to a powerful conclusion. Whether he’s describing Calum’s last meal before the job and that of his prey or evoking the deceptively polite manners of his sinister employers, Mackay never deviates from the stony, heartless, dangerously restrained style he has set himself. It’s an audacious and risky tactic, but he pulls off his first hit with the same strong nerve and cool head his hero brings to his work’
Herald
‘Brutal, witty and well-written ... a brilliant debut’
Sunday Telegraph
‘Written with persuasive authority, The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter is cool, laconic and very enjoyable. I look forward eagerly to the second novel in the trilogy’
Allan Massie