The Long Knives (The CRIME series, 2)

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And you absolutely cannot beat the feeling when one of the Trainspotting boys makes a cameo appearance. The excitement when I realised was similar to the feeling of him winking at me when I was sitting waiting for the Trainspotting stage show to start. Unreal. After the life Gulliver has led, the suspects are many: corporate rivals, political opponents, the countless groups he's offended. And the vulnerable and marginalised, who bore the brunt of his cruelty - those without a voice, without a choice, without a chance. The Long Knives (2022) is a sequel to Crime (2008) which in turn was a follow-up of sorts to Filth (1998). It works fine as a standalone novel. Probably what might have been is that it might’ve been shite. I can’t think of a working-class British writer who’s done massively well out of winning the Booker prize; it didn’t do [James] Kelman much good.

Crime isn’t one of my favourites, and I blame the Miami sun for that. I prefer Welsh’s characters to be floating in the grey setting of Edinburgh, leaning into the darkness of the culture, and operating on familiar territory. So this sequel taking place on its rightful soil was a huge draw. Not that I’d have given it a miss otherwise, ken. No, I’ve learned how to do that down the years. I didn’t know how to write a novel when I wrote Trainspotting. I had these loose stories that seemed to be heading somewhere; the start was going on too much about how they became junkies, so I cut it and went straight into their world and ended it with a heist ending I thought would be dramatic. Then I went on to The Acid House – more stories. Marabou Stork Nightmares was my first attempt at a conventional novel but it turned out quite experimental. I was just messing around in those first few books. They were probably the best ones, because then you learn how to write and you end up writing like everybody else [laughs]. The first book was turned into a six-part TV series starring Dougray Scott – inspiring Welsh to write a follow-up, and filming on its TV adaptation is due to begin next week. At the end of the novel, Welsh even tries to give up on understanding any of it, with one of the detectives having the revelation that all this trans stuff is 'a distraction, mate, a petty diversion from the real farking issues.' Really he would've been better off focusing on all the stuff about elite Tory abusers. He had some good lines about all of that, but it felt like his heart wasn't really in it, which is strange and sad because his previous work he was really able to dig into this kind of thing.Lennox non si è mai davvero ripreso da un’aggressione che ne ha marchiato l’infanzia e i suoi incubi sono destinati a peggiorare, dovendo indagare sull’omicidio del deputato Ritchie Gulliver, brutalmente mutilato. Era un politico corrotto, razzista e pieno di nemici ma, rapidamente, i cadaveri si moltiplicano e il modus operandi non cambia, lasciando intendere la mente perversa di un serial killer. Finché, con la scomparsa di Fraser, il nipote dell’ispettore, tutto diventa dannatamente personale e i buoni propositi di Lennox per restare sulla retta via, vacillano pericolosamente. Suscita inoltre un certo fastidio o quanto meno un distacco di partecipazione (ma forse è solo una mia personale idiosincrasia…) il fatto che il nocciolo dell’intera trama poliziesca sia costruito sul tema dei crimini sessuali più disumani, la violenza sui minori e la redenzione affidata a una vendetta perseguita per anni e messa in atto con una ferocia non inferiore a quella dei criminali primari. Welsh said: “I was a bit wary about that at first because I thought it was kind of a layer of censorship, but actually it was very enlightening for me, very educational.” Trainspotting author Welsh said: “Real life is so grotesque and gruesome anyway. Politicians and leaders are all so grotesque and horrendous that I think, to get any attention, art has to be even more horrendous than them.”

Certain things did change. There’s certain things I just got wrong; I’m happy to be corrected. Other things [other responses] were quite affirmative. It was nice to have the motivation for what I was doing understood. If I’m just sitting there typing away thinking ‘this is nice, this is nice’ and nothing’s happening, then nothing’s going to happen for the reader either,” he said.

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The Long Knives is the second in a trilogy about Edinburgh detective Ray Lennox, following 2008’s Crime. You’re cut away from the rest of the world so you can concentrate on love and art, which are the only things you really want to concentrate on anyway,” he said.

You have the book out and a few days later we start filming [it]. We’re in pre-production now, so it’s kind of record time.” The Long Knives’ is the second novel in which DI Ray Lennox is the main protagonist, the first being the novel ‘Crime’ and he also featured in the novel ‘Filth’ too. I had read Filth but hadn’t read ‘Crime’ prior to reading this novel, as it can be read as as a stand alone but I actually went and watched the television series, ‘Crime’ which was based on that novel and it gave me a bit of a flavour of what had went on prior to the events in this outing. He told STV current affairs show Scotland Tonight at the Edinburgh International Book Festival: “We shot the first season based in part on the original book. I tend to use humour to give the reader a break. If you’re forcing people to look at potentially intolerable material, you have to give them space to reset; you can show as much darkness as possible as long as you’re groping in some ways for the light switch.Ma, a prescindere da ogni considerazione, I lunghi coltelli è un romanzo che mette in discussione ogni valore morale e che punta a squarciarti la pancia (e non solo...) a causa dei tuoi errori e delle tue debolezze. Irvine Welsh travalica i confini del bene e del male per raccontare - a modo suo - una storia fatta di dolore, rabbia e ingiustizia, dove i buoni diventano cattivi perché tutti sono andati troppo oltre e non si torna più indietro. Premessa: con questo libro io e Irvine Welsh abbiamo festeggiato 30 anni di grande e smisurata amicizia. Correva infatti l'anno '93 quando ci conoscemmo grazie a Trainspotting. Questo solo per dire che ogni mio giudizio può essere influenzato da fattori quali l'affetto verso quel mondo e la conoscenza dei suoi personaggi e delle sue storie.