Paperboy - (Pushkin Vertigo) by Callum McSorley (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A dark, raw, and comic Glaswegian detective thriller: the follow-up to Squeaky Clean, winner of the McIlvanney Prize for best Scottish crime book of the year.

"Energetic, inventive and witty, laying on the tension as it builds to a nerve-shredding finale." -- Chris Brookmyre, author of The Cracked Mirror

DCI Alison McCoist is back in action, and her promotion hasn't earned her any friends. In fact, it's made her even more unpopular. Struggling to balance her new responsibilities with the growing pressure to prove herself, McCoist finds herself tangled in a web of crime and corruption.

Chuck Gardner owns a confidential paper-shredding business, but his addiction to gambling has left him deeply in debt. When he stumbles across some incriminating documents, Chuck becomes unwittingly caught in a deadly game of power and deceit.

Meanwhile, McCoist is called to the scene of a gruesome discovery - a rat-nibbled corpse under a flyover. As she investigates, both Chuck and McCoist are sucked into a deadly stramash of gangland wars and police corruption.

Can Chuck solve his gambling and gangster problems before some heed-banger feeds him into his own shredder? And can McCoist claw herself out of this latest shitemire without her own shady dealings coming to light? It might depend on how far she's prepared to go...

Paperboy is the darkly comic follow-up to the McIlvanney Prize winner, Squeaky Clean. The author, Callum McSorley, has been hailed as one of the most exciting new voices in crime writing, and has been praised by authors like Chris Brookmyre and Kevin Bridges.

Review Quotes

"A novel dripping with wicked black humour and a real sense of place"
--McIlvanney Prize Judges

"Violent, profane, hilarious"
--Telegraph, The best new crime and thriller books to read this year

"Looking for something a little bit ... filthy? Try Paperboy... This energetic novel from a rising star of crime is full of black comedy, gore, slapstick and street slang"
--The Times, Summer Reads

About the Author

Callum McSorley is a writer based in Glasgow whose short stories have appeared in Gutter Magazine, Monstrous Regiment and New Writing Scotland. Squeaky Clean was his debut novel, inspired by his years working at a car wash in Glasgow's East End. With it, Callum won the prestigious McIlvanney Prize for best Scottish crime novel of the year.