Stuart MacBride - Blind Eye

Review by Malcolm F. Martland on show 28 January 2010
Blind Eye is the latest in a series of detective novels by Stuart MacBride. The principal character is Detective Sgt Logan McRae also known as Lazarus or Laz to his pals, because of his miraculous recovery from a savage knife attack in a previous novel.

The MO appears to be that a disaffected Aberdonian has taken a crusade upon himself to punish the Polish workers who have come to take all their jobs and women. He does this by gouging out their eyes and burning the sockets with lighter fuel. But soon he targets some of the local gangsters as well.

With some similarities to the girl who played with fire much of the story is about importing prostitutes but in this case mainly from Poland. After some pretty gruesome episodes involving local thugs, claw hammers and paedophiles Logan detains a deranged suspect who admits to everything.

But then they get a call from Polish police similar atrocities have been happening there to. So Logan heads off to Poland only to find that most of the victims are long dead and his Polish guide Victoria almost gives up on the case. However Logan researches the history of the mutilations and finds one man, a militant from the Solidarity era and known as The Watchmaker because of his expertise with bombs – he was blinded in just the same way as the Aberdeen victims – but it appears that it is because of his conflicts with the KGB and local gangster network.

Logan manages to get blown up in the investigation by a booby trap set by The Watchmaker but he survives and returns to Aberdeen where mental assessments on his suspect show that he is completely bonkers. The mental patient is released, and properly rearrested for poking somebody’s eye out in a bar!

Meanwhile more victims appear, both of the blinding and claw hammer attacks. There is a confusion of rival gangs, and Eastern Bloc pimps running a prostitution racket in Polish girls. But it is the Eastern bloc pimps that still retain the old spy who put people’s eyes out in retribution. Logan sets out to solve the case in a gory denouement.

The whole novel sounds awful but the writing is very humorous, quite similar to Ian Rankin but a lot gorier. There are some wonderful one-liners too, dark police humour. Love it or hate it - I loved it!
Review by Malcolm F. Martland 28 January 2010