Long Day Monday: A Glasgow P Division Procedural [Hardcover]

Peter Turnbull (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1993

Time runs out as the men and women of Glasgow's P Division frantically search for a missing child who they fear has been kidnapped by a bizarre serial killer.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The urban wastelands of industrial Glasgow, Scotland's largest city, are bared mercilessly once again in this latest potent procedural from the author of Fair Friday and Two Way Cut . Turnbull's compelling vision rivals the narrative firepower of John Harvey ( Rough Treatment ) and fellow Glaswegian William McIllvanney ( Strange Loyalties ). Twenty-five years separate the discoveries of two abandoned cars; each was carefully parked and a stuffed toy rabbit was found close by. The first came at the start of copper Ray Sussock's career, the second close to its end, when Sussock is punching the clock, waiting out his time on the force and rebounding from a painful divorce. But unbeknownst to Sussock, the two cars stand close to shallow graves, marking brutal child murders that represent only two of a serial killer's many crimes. In a brief tale suffused with suffering, Turnbull depicts the timid and battered wife of an eyewitness, the distraught mother of a missing boy, a starving child waiting for death and two prostitutes battling booze and heroin. While none of the police of Glasgow's P Division is a saint in the city, they are indelibly touched by the emotional and physical harshness of the terrain they traverse day by day. An outstanding series.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

Glasgow's police, P Division, are hard at work, grappling with two major new cases alongside the usual run of mean-streets crime. The body of Sandra Shapiro, at 20 an alcoholic prostitute, has been found buried at the edge of a farm, near the stolen car in which her body was probably transported. And ten-year-old Tim Moore is missing from his middle-class home. Initial investigation has produced no clue to his fate, but something found near the stolen car triggers the memory of a 25-year-old incident in the mind of veteran Sergeant Ray Sussock (Condition Purple, 1989, etc.). It raises the macabre specter of a quarter century of unsolved, perhaps unknown killings and heightens the urgency of finding Tim Moore before it's too late. How this is accomplished, using every tool of modern crime detection, makes for high-tension suspense--in a gritty story enhanced by sensitive insights into the lives of its heroes and victims. Another can't-put-it-down winner for Turnbull. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 181 pages
• Publisher: St Martins Pr (March 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 031208837X
• ISBN-13: 978-0312088378
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.7 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,610,067 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Terse Glasgow Police Procedural, November 2, 2007

By 

A. Ross (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Long Day Monday: A Glasgow P Division Procedural (Hardcover)

The eighth of Turnbull's eleven Glasgow-set "P Division" police procedurals follows the squad over the course of a few days in which a young boy goes missing and a teenage girl's corpse is discovered in the nearby countryside. The prose is clipped and the characterization minimal, as Turnbull lets the story unfurl in a strict chronological progression. Squad members who go off duty generally shuffle off-stage as the action is picked up by the new shift of characters. While occasional diversions are made to the coppers' off-duty lives, this never reaches the psychological complexity or detail of, for example, John Harvey's series. (Of course, as with any series, the characters will be much richer to those who have read the previous seven books.)

Adhering the strict framework of procedurals, the police systematically pursue each case, and further details slowly accrue, including a potential link to a 25-year-old case. Some of the procedures show their age (for example, suspect parameters are given to the unit's "collator", who works some kind of computer magic to yield potential suspects, and skull-based facial reconstruction is a brand new field), but it all holds together quite well. I'm not generally a fan of serial killer plotlines, but Turnbull's light touch and avoidance of spending fifty pages delving into the killer's motivation makes this one palatable. Readers who prefer to focus on procedure over character will find this an excellent read, and I will certainly be going back to start the series from the beginning.