Every Night I Dream of Hell

Though this Glasgow is as dark and dirty as the city he chronicled in his "Glasgow Trilogy" (The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter; The Sudden Arrival of Violence; How a Gunman Says Goodbye), Mackay takes a slightly different route with this latest stand-alone, though one that shares DNA with The Night the Rich Men Burned. For the first time, readers experience Glaswegian criminal life in the first person, namely Nate Colgan; him some Mackay fans may remember in the previous books as a "security consultant" for Peter Jamieson's criminal organization. Except now Jamieson, and his right-hand man, John Young, are locked up, and Colgan, along with Jamieson's trusted lieutenants, must keep the organization going and fend off unwanted advances from new guys looking to make a name for themselves. There's trouble at home, too, when Zara Cope, the mother of Nate's child, reappears and brings with her a whirlwind of drama. On the other side of the law—though the beauty of Mackay's world is that nothing is ever so cut and dried—DI Michael Fisher is keen to bring down even more of the organization, although he's got a bit of a thing for a certain Ms. Cope.