With Christmas season in the offing, Detective Sergeant Bruce Robertson
of Edinburgh's finest is gearing up socially -- looking forward to his
annual week of sex and drugs in Amsterdam. There are some sizable flies
in the ointment, though: a missing wife and child, a nagging cocaine
habit, some painful below-the-belt eczema, and a string of demanding
extramarital affairs. The last thing Robertson needs is a messy,
racially fraught murder, even if it means overtime -- and the
opportunity to clinch the promotion he craves. Then there's that
nutritionally demanding, and conscience nagging, parasite living in his
gut. Yes, things are going badly, but in an Irvine Welsh novel nothing
is ever so bad that it can't get a whole lot worse.