Every Night I Dream of Hell

Nate Colgan, a side player in Edgar-finalist Mackay’s Glasgow trilogy (The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter, etc.), narrates this morally complex standalone. Nate is the muscle with brains for Peter Jamieson’s crime organization in Glasgow, a position that has become all the more necessary now that Jamieson and his right-hand man, John Young, are serving time. Dubbed a security consultant, Nate sees two threats to the Jamieson empire: first, infighting and the inevitable internal power grabs; second, the infiltration of a deadly gang from England, hell-bent on taking over. Led by Adrian Barrett, the new lads want Jamieson’s slice of the Glaswegian drug business, which isn’t insubstantial, and they’ll kill to get it. Nate isn’t against getting his hands dirty, but he stops short when he realizes that Zara Cope, his ex-girlfriend and the mother of his nine-year-old daughter, is entangled with Barrett’s gang. Filled with bloody intrigue, Scottish slang, and enough twists and turns to keep even the most astute reader guessing, this is hard-boiled fiction at its finest. [em]Agent: Grainne Fox, Fletcher & Company. (Apr.) [/em]