Dead Man's Lie

ROLL OVER RASPUTIN

Set in the Scottish Borders, Marten Claridge's mean streets may not be those of grim procedurals set in dreich innercities populated by a relentless parade of hard-talking hardons but that doesn't mean his quiet Border lanes don't shudder with a violence spawned in the shadows of our worst urban nightmares. Mean streets wear many guises but the motives for murder never change. Brother Lox Lennox puts it another way:

"Not all our righteous paths are paved with the bodies of those who stand in our way."

But then Lennox is no ordinary monk. Ex SAS and with a bullet still lodged in his skull, his convoluted past is a minefield of contradictions best avoided in the sanctuary of the cloisters. He fought subversive wars in the Middle East the papers never got to hear about. In the 80s he infiltrated the Scottish Revolutionary Army and on behalf of his shadowy masters raised the spectre of Tartan Terrorism to a whole new lethal level. But good times never last, and when the betrayer became the betrayed he returned to his native Borders and like many a reiver before him went into hiding.

But mad dogs don't retire, they just tread more lightly and learn to hunt at night.