Davie McCall Collection
- Regular
- £30.00
- Sale
- £30.00
- Regular
- £35.06
- Unit Price
- per
Blood City; 9781910021248; paperback
Crow Bait; 9781910021828; paperback
Devil's Knock; 9781910021811; paperback
Open Wounds; 9781910745335; paperback
About Blood City:
Meet Davie McCall – not your average henchman. Abused and tormented by his father for fifteen years, there is a darkness in him searching for a way out. Under the wing of Glasgow’s Godfather, Joe ‘the Tailor’ Klein, he flourishes.
Joe the Tailor may be a killer, but there are some lines he won’t cross, and Davie agrees with his strict moral code. He doesn’t like drugs. He won’t condone foul language. He abhors violence against women. When the Tailor refuses to be part of Glasgow’s new drug trade, the hits start rolling. It’s every man for himself as the entire criminal underworld turns on itself, and Davie is well and truly caught up in the action.
But an attractive young reporter makes him wonder if he can leave his life of crime behind and Davie must learn the hard way that you cannot change what you are. Blood City is a novel set in Glasgow’s underworld at a time when it was undergoing a seismic shift. A tale of violence, corruption and betrayal, loyalties will be tested and friendships torn apart.
Reviews:
...positively delights in the city's dark underbelly complete with knives, razors, guns and gangs... Fierce, all too believable, and with a clear ear for the Glasgow dialect. Daily Mail
Blood City signals the arrival of a new and sophisticated voice in Scotland's crime fiction community. Glasgow Now
[Skelton has] taken well to fiction, skilfully building up the atmosphere, developing the characters and keeping the unexpected twists coming along. ALASTAIR MABBOT, The Herald
Jump in and you ll quickly be caught up in the atmosphere. Effortless prose, Glasgow banter and the wearing down of shoe leather as you charge through the streets of Douglas Skelton s vision of the mean city. MICHAEL J MALONE, crimesquad.com
About Crow Bait:
They’ll all be crow bait by the time I’m finished...
Jail was hell for Davie McCall. Ten years down the line, freedom’s no picnic either. It’s 1990, there are new kings in the West of Scotland underworld, and Glasgow is awash with drugs.
Davie can handle himself. What he can’t handle is the memory of his mother’s death at the hand of his sadistic father. Or the darkness his father implanted deep in his own psyche. Or the nightmares…
Now his father is back in town and after blood, ready to waste anyone who stops him hacking out a piece of the action. There are people in his way.
And Davie is one of them.
Reviews:
A gory and razor-sharp crime novel from the start, Douglas Skelton’s Crow Bait moves at breakneck speed like a getaway car on the dark streets of Glasgow, the city where this story takes place. TABTHA GLANCY, The Skinny
About Devil's Knock:
When the devil comes knocking, you either tell that bastard to get the hell away, or you invite him in.
Davie McCall has darkness inside him. A darkness that haunts him, but also helps him do despicable things to those trying to cause him and his friends harm.
When Dickie Himes is killed in a club owned by the Jarvis clan, it sparks a chain of events that Davie knows can only lead to widespread gang war on the streets of mid-’90s Glasgow. The police are falling over themselves to solve the crime, but when justice is so easily bought or corrupted, Davie needs to take matters into his own hands.
Davie has to contend with the ghosts of those he has failed, a persistent Hollywood actor and a scruffy dog with no name. When he finds a target on his back, will Davie be able to suppress the darkness inside him and refuse to kill…
Or will the devil’s knock be too tempting?
About Open Wounds:
Davie McCall is tired. Tired of violence, tired of the Life. He's always managed to stay detached from the brutal nature of his line of work, but recently he has caught himself enjoying it.
In the final instalment in the Davie McCall series old friends clash and long buried secrets are unearthed as McCall investigates a brutal five-year-old crime.
Davie wants out, but the underbelly of Glasgow is all he has ever known. Will what he learns about his old ally Big Rab McClymont be enough to get him out of the Life? And could the mysterious woman who just moved in upstairs be just what he needs?
Reviews:
A massive five stars for Open Wounds – Douglas Skelton has a canny knack of taking the reader on a journey that embroiled them into the “Life” but also transports them right onto the streets of Glasgow – through the tenement buildings, up the dark closes and places you’d never want to go – reading his books makes me live, breathe and experience the world of Davie McCall. CHAPTERINMYLIFE
Dark and satisfying, plenty of great dialogue and humour, that old cliché – a page-turner – well it is. What’s even better is the economy of style in which Skelton wraps this all up – a shade under 250 pages. BIFF, BANG, BOSH! Job done – highly recommended! COL'S CRIMINAL LIBRARY
This is genuine Tartan Noir, grounded in the real recognisable Glasgow of today – a rare treasure amidst some of the overblown melodramatic dross which is so often wrongly acclaimed as giving an authentic picture of life here. I’m delighted to have stumbled across Douglas Skelton and he is now part of that select band of Scottish crime writers to whose future books I will look forward with keen anticipation. FICTION FAN BLOG
Reading Open Wounds was a joy on so many levels and the moments of levity gave a nice balance against some of the more gritty scenes. GRAB THIS BOOK
About the Author:
DOUGLAS SKELTON is an established true crime author, penning eleven books including Glasgow’s Black Heart, Frightener and Dark Heart. He has appeared on a variety of documentaries and news programmes as an expert on Glasgow crime, most recently on STV’s In Search of Bible John. His 2005 book Indian Peter was later adapted for a BBC Scotland radio documentary which he presented. This series is his first foray into fiction.