Award-winning Scottish author Alex Gray’s DCI Lorimer series is one Auntie M has read in its early novels. The co-founder of the international Scottish crime writing festival, Bloody Scotland, the series secondarily highlights the friendship and entwined lives between Lorimer and Dr. Soloman Brightman, psychologist and profiler, and their wives. Lorimer’s Maggie is an English teacher; Rosie Solomon is the medical examiner who catches many of his cases. These four repeating characters appear in each novel and bring their own undercurrent to the crime stories in a very human way. With strong characterizations and plot lines that twist and turn, this is a highly recommended series with varied cases to keep you interested.

Here are reviews of three in this rewarding series, with more to come in the US this spring:


Sleep Like the Dead

Sleep Like the Dead opens with Lorimer and his new DC Fahey investigating the death of Kenneth Scott, a man who doesn’t seem to have enemies or a reason to be murdered.

Missing from questioning is his ex-wife, Marianne, and her brother, petty criminal Billy Brogan. Readers learn their whereabouts but they elude Lorimer at first.

There’s an angry hit man waiting for his pay check set loose on the streets of Glasgow. It doesn’t help that Lorimer’s profiler, Brightman, has been cut loose due to budget cuts on this case.

A personal subplot revolving around Maggie and her friend Rosie’s pregnancy adds a touching note to the story as it advances.

The seedier side of Glasgow is on diplay in A Pound of Flesh, with Lorimer temporariiy in charge of a new unit, out of his familiar setting, and charged with investigating a string of deaths of prostitutes. Men are being killed, too, with a certain Mercedes being involved.

Then a prominent deputy first minister is among the murdered men, and Lorimer is told to concentrate on finding his killer instead of finding the murderer of the women.

Being the man of compassion and instinct that he is, Lorimer continues with both investigations until he finds where they overlap and how the two threads are connected.

Interesting chapters from one of the killers point of view illuminate the reasons for the men’s murders. Different and interesting.

Five students rent rooms together in a flat owned by the father of one of them, The Swedish Girl. Eva Magnusson is the lovely young student whose father has carefully chosen the mix of young men and women who will room with his daughter.

Then Eva is found murdered, and the detective on the case, Jo Grant, arrests one of the male students for the killing. But flatmate Kirsty Wilson comes to Colin’s defense. The daughter of a colleague of Lorimer’s, she enlists his aid to prove her friend is not the murderer.

When a series of women who all look like Eva are found dead, Lorimer starts to agree with Kirsty that Jo Grant has arrested the wrong man.

Lorimer will travel to Stockholm to interview the dead girl’s father, and learn Eva’s background. There are plenty of twists and turns, with people keeping secrets, even the Swedish girl.

Look for the next in this series to be reviewed this spring. If you haven’t discovered Alex Gray yet, you’re in for a treat.