The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter

Malcolm Mackay

2014 Nominee

Theakstons Old Peculiar Crime Novel of the Year Award

2013 Nominee

Saltire Society First Book of the Year Award

2013 Nominee

CWA John Creasey New Blood Dagger

2013 Winner

Specsavers The Crime Thriller Book Club Best Read

17 January 2013
9780230764644
256 pages

Synopsis

Winner of the ITV3 Crime Thriller Book Club Best Read Award.
Shortlisted for the CWA John Creasey Dagger for Best Debut Crime Novel of the Year and the Saltire Scottish First Book of the Year Award.
Longlisted for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger for Best Thriller of the Year and the Theakston's Crime Novel of the Year Award.

A twenty-nine-year-old man lives alone in his Glasgow flat. The telephone rings; a casual conversation, but behind this a job offer. The clues are there if you know to look for them.

He is an expert. A loner. Freelance. Another job is another job, but what if this organization wants more?

A meeting at a club. An offer. A brief. A target: Lewis Winter.

It's hard to kill a man well. People who do it well know this. People who do it badly find out the hard way. The hard way has consequences.

An arresting, gripping novel of dark relationships and even darker moralities, The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter introduces a remarkable voice in crime fiction.

Malcolm Mackay's award-winning The Glasgow Trilogy continues in How A Gunman Says Goodbye and The Sudden Arrival of Violence.

‘Cool, laconic and very enjoyable. I look forward eagerly to the second novel in the trilogy’ Allan Massie

‘A very auspicious debut, this is an amazing novel, incredibly gripping from the first page to the last. A vivid portrait of the Glasgow underworld, it’s completely hypnotic . . . like the great writers, people like Elmore Leonard, Mackay paints really vivid portraits of his characters . . . a really unique voice’ Mark Billingham

‘A really clever multi-viewpoint novel about the Glasgow underworld . . . The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter was a real revelation, a real find for me’ Kate Mosse

‘A dark, rich, brutal thriller . . . it absolutely captivates you. The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter is more than a page turner, it’s a page ripper. For a debut novel this sparkles, this zings, it leaps off the page. If you like Ian Rankin, if you like Stuart MacBride, if you like Val McDermid, Denise Mina – Malcolm Mackay is right up there’ Peter James

‘Glasgow’s a tough city and this is a tough book . . . very authentic, very gritty, you can really feel the streets. They call this genre Tartan Noir and absolutely The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter is a first class member of that’ Lee Child

‘I finished it almost in a sitting. The prose is spare and taut and pulls the reader into the minds of the disparate characters . . . beautifully and truthfully written with the deceptive simplicity of a fine short story’ Ann Cleeves, creator of VERA

‘A remarkably original debut . . . this is a book that it would be hard not to finish in one sitting . . . a wholly believable and unnerving portrait of organised crime’ Observer