Customer Reviews

Absolution: A Novel of Suspense

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Somewhere in Mark Twain's short stories, there is a character with a horsewhip. This character should be resurrected and introduced to Ms. Ramsay's editor. This is a story badly in need of a rewrite. The Publisher's Weekly review hits the nail on the head in calling it "unremarkable". And when it refers to the McAlpine character as a series protagonist, it also tips its hand - the reviewer gave up on the book and did not read it to its conclusion. So will many readers, I think.

The book fails on a number of fronts. Clearly intended to piggy-back on the success of Ian Rankin's Rebus novels which are set in Edinburgh, Ms. Ramsay does not get past the mimicry in style and into a territory of her own. She flounders. In the first half of the book she creates some interesting plot lines and does a creditable job in developing several interesting characters. But she is unable to carry this forward. The second half of the novel stumbles badly, she wrecks most of her characters and takes the book to a poor and mostly unbelievable ending.

Although the book runs to 400 pages, the story ends incomplete and unsatisfying. The first half of the book promises more than the author can deliver. The pains taken in developing the start of the tale are wasted in her rush to cram in everything else she has planned for the story. Her editor should have let her run the tale to six or seven hundred pages like an Elizabeth George novel, or he should have insisted on better discipline in tightening the story and its direction.

Finally, while the novel (and some of its reviewers) claim that it offers the color and flavor of Glasgow, I found this lacking. The story really could have been anywhere. Rain and street names do not make a city.

All in all, the failures of this novel do not bode well for Ms. Ramsay's future efforts. The story falls apart badly , and her editor has failed to get her to come to grips with the basic issues of pacing and development.

Let me also vent a personal gripe here. At one point, Ms. Ramsay has a character recovering from a car accident; he is mobile but bruised. She describes him by stating that "healthier people had walked out of Belsen". Like her prince cavorting in a Nazi uniform, I found this to be in the poorest taste, showing the both a lack of knowledge and good judgment. She, her editor, and her reader friends should all be ashamed. There is film footage of concentration camp survivors. They should bother to watch it.

Beautifully capturing the windy, chilly streets of Glasgow, this dark and gritty crime drama centers on two crimes committed over twenty years apart, with Detective Chief Investigator Alan McAlpine somehow holding the key to a series of brutal murders involving three young women who have been horribly disemboweled and then left for dead.

Back in 1984 McAlpine is just a rookie cop, a naïve twenty-year old when he is called upon to investigate the identity of a pregnant girl who goes by the name of Anna, and who now lies in a hospital bed, all bandaged up, a victim of a terrible, acid attack, her face neck hands and stomach, brutally scared with the acid burning deep.

Alan hadn't expected Anna to be so young and so fragile, and he's surprised that no one is asking about her and that there are no visitors. On his first night on duty by her bedside, he sits among the detritus of the evidence and discovers in her little black handbag, wrapped in a web of sellotape, a ring, plain silver with a single diamond, a lover's ring. Who could have given her this ring? Was perhaps her husband or her fiancé involved in the attack?

Soon after her daughter is born, Anna abruptly suicides, her injuries and scars just too much for her to bear. Alan is grief stricken, and now with his brother Robbie also gone, he falls into an inconsolable maelstrom of sorrow and heartache. There was something about Anna that entranced him even as the individual and the circumstances behind the attack on her remains a mystery that is never solved.

But it is these memories that stretch and yawn, uncoiling from sleep that come back to haunt McAlpine when in 2006 he returns to his old stamping ground to investigate the brutal slaying of Elizabeth Jane Fulton Lynzi Traill, both found murdered, ripped open and left to bleed to death, with no forensic evidence found at either site, only the blistering of chloroform remaining round the mouth and nose.

Together with his colleagues Detective Sergeants Anderson and Costello, McAlpine is sure that he can crack the case, after all, Costello brings many unique talents to the investigation, especially her female intuition, and Anderson is certain to provide a fresh and younger eye, someone who can rise to the occasion and perhaps even keep the errant McAlpine focused.

The young and handsome and recently paroled Sean McTiernan is an obvious suspect, but his current whereabouts remains unknown. He knew both Elizabeth Jane and Lynzi. Soon enough it is discovered that Elizabeth Jane had let someone into her flat, someone she knew and trusted. Lynzi also left Glasgow Central at night again, with somebody she knew and trusted, but not her husband and not her boyfriend.

When A prostitute known as Arlene, well known in the area is discovered in a back lane with her head smashed in, the police are certain that McTiernan is responsible as he has a history of carrying out this type of violence. Things have certainly turned sadistic, the killer thorough and relentless in his Modus operandi and the media even labeling him the "Crucifixion Killer."

Eventually Costello and Anderson start to piece the case together and realizing that all of the girls, behaved deceptively and dishonestly, each knowing the power of their femininity in some way and each using it to get their own way. Perhaps there is even is religious connection, especially when it is revealed that Elizabeth Jane, Lynzi and even Arlene were frequenting the Phoenix Refuge, a type of half-way house cum church well known in the community for looking after those who were down on their luck.

Certainly the Reverend Leask who works at the Refuge and who lives right across from Lynzi's boyfriend, knows Elizabeth Jane's parents, and even Father O'Keefe the founder of the Church, had a connection to all three of the girls. One thing is certain, McAlpine, Costello and Anderson are sure that this combination of women, anger, power, and hatred is tied to the smell of morality, the perpetrator determined to kill women whom he perceives as "immoral."

Set against the cold constant dark and dirty Glaswegian rain, Absolution is a shadowy and subversive police procedural, with author Caro Ramsay brilliantly juxtaposing Anna's death with McAlpine's ghosts, and the current investigation of the murdered girls. The actions of the three main detectives and their rationales behind the Crucifixion Killer drive much of the plot while also revealing much about inner workings of the Glasgow police network. Mike Leonard February 08.

"Glasgow, 1984

Police Cadet Alan McAlpine has just returned to duty at Partickhill Station after the death of his brother who, while serving with the Customs Service, drowns when he tries to save a man who fell from a boat that has been rammed. To ease the twenty year-old back into the service, he is assigned to protect a young woman who is dying, her body so damaged after an attack with acid, there is no hope for her recovery. The police know where she lived, but there is nothing there that gives them any information about who she is. There is just a picture of a beautiful woman, the woman as she was before the attack. In the last stages of pregnancy at the time of the attack, she has given birth to a healthy daughter, a baby she can neither see nor hold. McAlpine breaks the rules; instead of staying in the corridor outside her door, he spends time talking to her, telling her about his brother, telling her about his life. He cannot know, because she cannot speak, that she has been desperate for someone to speak to her, to acknowledge that even in the state she is in, she is alive and needs human contact.

Alan realizes that she is aware of him and gradually they work out a system of communication: a move of her thumb is no, a move of her finger is yes. Alan names her Anastasia after the woman who claimed to be the daughter of the last Czar. He calls her Anna. Suddenly, he is removed from his post and just as suddenly she dies. For Alan, it is too late; he has fallen in love with a woman about whom he knew nothing and he will love her all the days of his life.

Glasgow, 2006

Detective Chief Inspector Alan McAlpine returns to Partickhill Station for the first time in twenty-two years to take over the investigation into the deaths of women who appear to be the victims of a serial killer. They have been found with their arms outstretched and their feet crossed at the ankles. The press has dubbed the man "the Crucifixion Killer". McAlpine begins the slow process of getting to know his new team and learning what little information there is about the victims. There seems to be nothing that connects them until McAlpine starts to focus on Sean McTiernan who has worked in places where he could have met the dead women. McTiernan has just been released from jail after serving a sentence for culpable homicide; he killed a man who had attacked him first.

McAlpine has a good reputation as an investigator. He is married to the beautiful and successful Helena Farrell, the owner of a respected art gallery. On the surface he has everything a man would want but there is still, always, Anna. As the case progresses, the team finds themselves working against their leader who seems to be increasingly haunted by the acid attack 20 years before. Alan has become possessed by the image of a younger woman, a woman who is the ghost of Anna, pulling him further from the reality of his life. And as Alan is becoming increasingly lost, the team is becoming increasingly sure of the identity of their killer.

It isn't particularly difficult for the reader to determine the identity of the killer. But it is as the story moves toward its resolution that the reader is satisfied that all the threads will come together to a reasonable conclusion.

First Sentence: White.

In 1984, PC Alan McAlpine, working out of Partickhill station, was assigned to stand guard over a young woman who had been attacked with acid. McAlpine becomes obsessed with the young woman and devastated when she commits suicide.

Now in 2006, is a Detective Chief Inspector and back at Partickill. He and his team are faced with a killer who chloroforms woman, lays them out as though crucified and eviscerates them. McAlpine's past obsession becomes linked with his current case.

I had seriously mixed feelings about this book. The writing was strong and I enjoyed the book being set in Glasgow, which is somewhat different.

I liked McAlpine, his wife Helena and some of his fellow detectives. But as I think about it, I was put off by the feeling that huge pieces of information relating to the characters was missing and that there was very little actual character development.

The story kept me turning the pages in spite of the fact that I had identified both the killer and the motive very soon into the book. But it was the fact that I hated the ending that really clinched my rating. It felt as though it were a cheat.

So while the book held me for a straight-through read, I don't know that I shall read another by Ms. Ramsey.

Glasgow Detective Chief Investigator Alan McAlpine returns to his police cadet roots in Patrickhill Station to lead the official inquiry into the murders of two women by the serial killer dubbed Crucifixion Killer by the media. Alan avoided the town for two decades ever since he was assigned to keep safe the dying pregnant woman named Anna whose face was erased by acid and no longer could talk. Anna killed herself shortly after giving birth; no one involved in the heinous crime was ever caught, but Alan never forgot the woman he considered his beloved angel.

Still Alan focuses on the current serial killer homicides in an attempt to prevent more gruesome murders from this vicious predator. However, he begins to link the current investigation to the cold case that haunts him. His subordinates Detective Sergeants Anderson and Costello are confused by Alan's actions and directions as he makes a difficult case that much more convoluted because he sees ABSOLUTION as his objective.

Mindful of Ian Rankin's dark Glasgow thrillers, Caro Ramsay provides a strong psychological police procedural that grips readers once Alan begins connecting the past with the present. Readers along with the two DS will wonder whether Alan has gone over the edge or found a real connection; which premise makes this a deep read. Although the climax takes the audience back inside the sub-genre's norm, fans will appreciate the dark background that mirrors Alan's even darker revelations.

Harriet Klausner