The Sudden Arrival of Violence

"[Mackay's] Glasgow Trilogy is classic . . . The subject is organized crime, but it's the author's blunt eloquence that matters. Don't pick up a Mackay book unless you've got spare time. They're habit-forming."

"It's been a long time since so many pages went by so fast .... Mackay is a natural storyteller [with] a voice to which we're happy to surrender. Surprisingly rewarding .... a thriller trilogy that thrills. "

"Bracing ... remarkable."

"Mackay gathers all the pieces of his massively inventive puzzle together. . . . [A] bloody operatic finale."

"Superb . . . Mackay is a true original, managing to conjure up a gripping new way of portraying city-noir. This, from a writer who has lived his whole life in far-off Stornoway, with only few short visits to the Glasgow he has so vividly created. He's no longer a rising star. He's risen."

"Reviewers often groan at the hyperbole with which publishers adorn new novels, but with Malcolm Mackay it is justified. His poetic titles (The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter and How a Gunman Says Goodbye) are infused with the sense of menace that is the sine qua non of the genre while tipping the wink that this is crime writing with ambition. The Sudden Arrival of Violence is the conclusion to Mackay's acclaimed Glasgow trilogy . . . The youthful Mackay has the command of a writer twice his age, and he has delivered a conclusion to his trilogy that is just as cohesive and forceful as his previous two books."