In Gutted, only his second outing investigating the criminal underworld on DI Rebus's old manor of Edinburgh, Dury takes many a beating, physical and emotional, flirts with imprisonment for murder, and drinks and smokes like someone treating himself to a leisurely but serious suicide.
This is a man who follows a straight half-pint of Johnnie Walker with, well, more whisky, chased down by a Guinness, rounded off with gin. He likes a malt whisky but won't say no to Bell's. Or vodka. Or lager. And he owns the pub (left to him by a friend). He’s an alky, a ‘washed-up old soak’ as one police enemy puts it. His days are surely numbered.
Tony Black's Wonderfully Written Hero
So how much time can Black have with his wonderfully written protagonist, one who has placed the author among Britain's sharpest crime-writers so suddenly?
Where Rebus's creator, the best-selling Ian Rankin, enjoyed 20 years developing the curmudgeonly Rebus, Black may have far less time with the broody, self-detonating Dury.
Rebus, with his fags, booze, atrocious diet and bad attitude towards authority, teetered on the brink of disaster, but Dury has bungee-jumped over the edge. Yet Black does such a beautiful job of conjuring this decent, articulate though tragic ex-journalist that readers won't be able to resist time in his company.
Gus Dury Takes on a Gang of Dog Torturers
Gutted hurls us into the action from the get-go, with Dury running, plunging through night-time Corstorphine HIll in answer to a dog being tortured by a gang of yobs.
He’s the kind of guy to take on a gang with his fists in a brawl he could easily lose – perhaps, wants to lose, you half expect after a few of his confrontations. Here, his problems stem not from the punches he takes, however, but from his falling on the barely concealed, eviserated body of a gangster in the undergrowth.
Framing Dury
Some rather well-dressed detectives want to fit up Dury for the crime he reports. He suspects the son of judge, who was hanging round with the yobs, may have killed the man, whose mad dog was responsible for the death of the young man’s toddler sister.
Throw in fifty grand taken from the body but belonging to the local godfather, and some illegal dog-fighting, and there’s plenty of plot to keep Dury busy.
Dury's Sharp Tongue and Lost Love
But Black, like Rankin, relies more on superbly etched characters than plot to engage readers. It’s Dury with his sharp tongue, his lost love and trouble-attracting decency that stays in the mind.
Gutted reveals more of Dury’s broken marriage to Debs, who here is engaged to Jonny Johnstone, the flash detective gunning for Dury. The ex-couple still know each other too well and Dury’s guilt over his failure as a husband is achingly rendered.
Moving but Funny
The humour amid the pain is brilliant and should have broadminded readers rocking in their chairs. Just returned from a nasty scrape in one of the city’s more nightmarish estates, Dury snaps at a friend who tells him his pub is going out of business: ‘I’ve just escaped Deliverance territory and I’m mightily relieved not to have a length of hillbilly parked in my farter… The pub problems can wait.’
Whether he’s quoting Kafka or ranting about the ‘generation of delusional egomaniacs’ on The X Factor, Dury is fighting against life's disappointments and will have readers cheering him on.
Scottish Slang
There is also a hugely enjoyable flavour of Scottish lingo served up in these pages, perhaps the best outside of an Irvine Welsh novel. The context always gives meaning to the tang of expressions like thrawn, diddies, pagger, dowps, biffer, cark, chib, cludgie, sleekit, blooter and the like.
Tony Black is an award-winnning journalist and editor. Following on from his debut, Paying for It, which established Gus Dury, Gutted confirms Black as a compelling new crime novelist.
Anyone picking a Dury story for the first will be ganting for more, as the man himself might say. It must be hoped the drink doesn’t claim him soon.
- Gutted is published in hardback in the UK by Preface – June 2009. ISBN 978 1 84809 052 1
Robin Jarossi - London-based journalist and editor specialising in TV, sport and books. I was the editor of 'Cable Guide' and have worked at 'Radio ...
