1998 Norton trade paperback bought for a buck ($1) at
Royal Oak Bookshop
207 South Royal Avenue
Front Royal, Virginia
royaloakbookshop.com

From Booklist
The author of Trainspotting (1996) offers a novel with a politically correct twist, a philosophical intestinal worm, and a loathsome protagonist. Edinburgh cop Bruce Robertson is scaly-skinned, putrid, and worm-infested. Since his wife left, he eats only carry-out and does no laundry or cleaning. He views all humans as enemies and his police colleagues as too easy on the public--especially the new girl, with her annoying inclusive language and ideas, whom Bruce deems a lesbian. When assigned the murder of a black man, Bruce collects overtime pay harassing anyone faintly connected to the event, while the investigation almost comically stagnates. Meanwhile, the intestinal worm inside Bruce interjects with what Bruce suppresses and questions what Bruce never does. Bruce continues beating up thugs, forcing women into sex, and exploiting his associates' weaknesses. His defilements are unrepentant and almost unbearably relentless, until the surprise ending reveals that nothing is what it seems. Those who make it through Bruce's gruesome abuses and the difficult Scottish dialect will be left with something to think about.

From Publishers Weekly
Another scabrous, lurid, blackly comic novel from America's favorite Scottish enfant terrible, this one does for present-day Edinburgh what James Ellroy does for 1950s Los Angeles. Welsh begins with a detective's investigation into a murder -- the death of a Ghanaian ambassador's son -- and turns it into a vivid exploration of the detective's own twisted psyche and seedy milieu. Detective Bruce Robertson finds himself preoccupied not with the murder but with his own genital eczema, sadistic sexual antics involving any number of girlfriends and prostitutes, his increasingly chronic appetite for coke, alcohol and greasy fast food and, finally, the parasite that has taken up residence in his intestines. Welsh effectively plays off Robertson's bilious narration with the coolly insistent voice of another entity -- the tapeworm, who seems to be the repository of Robertson's childhood memories and what is left of his superego -- as the detective spins out of control, wasting himself in increasingly risky games of erotic asphyxiation with one of his mistresses (ex-wife of another detective), machinations to undermine his colleagues, and misanthropic rage: "Criminals, spastics, niggers, strikers, thugs, I don't fucking well care, it all adds up to one thing: something to smash." Even for readers who have mastered Welsh's Scots dialect, such an eloquently nasty narrator can be exhausting. As in the past, Welsh himself sometimes seems rather compromised as a satirist by the glee he takes in his characters' repulsiveness. Yet if this hypnotic chronicle of moral and psychological ruin (funnier and far more accessible than Welsh's last full-length novel, Marabou Stork Nightmares) fails to charm a wide readership, it will not disappoint devotees.

This is one of 42 (so far) Bookcrossing books on a table in the second floor hallway at 149 York Street. It's a Yale building with restricted access, which is why I'm not making release notes. If you have a Yale ID (or know someone who does), you may be able to get in. Use the door to the right; the door on the left goes to the basement.

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