A rather depressing novel set in the murky underworld of Edinburgh. The principal charcter (I can't countenance the term "hero") is an ex-journalist sinking ever-deeper into alcoholism, who is commissioned to investigate the death of the son of a friend. It turns out that the dead man had been involved in people trafficking and various other crimes in the course of which he had crossed Edinburgh's burgeoning Russian gang community.
Interesting but too disjointed to be an enjoyable or rewarding read. ( )

http://its-criminal.blogspot.com/2008/12/paying-for-it-by-tony-black.html ( )

Set in Edinburgh this is an atmospheric and gritty novel, but also full of dark humour. Gus Dury is an ex-journalist and his wife is divorcing him as the demon drink has taken a strong hold of him. His friend Col’s son is found dead, but the police say that he committed suicide. Gus finds out this isn’t true and Col asks him to find the killer of his son and what’s with the cover-up? Gus endeavours to find the truth and along the way we meet some unsavoury characters, as well as a wolf, and see Gus facing his own demons regarding his upbringing with his cruel and harsh father.

What a fantastic crime novel, I found this exceptionally entertaining. At times it felt you could really warm to Gus, but then at others you just wanted to yell at him to get a grip, but then I guess that’s the way it can be with alcoholics. I found that characterization was great, plot was superb and it was really fast paced and also contained emotional depth. For me this had everything that I love in a book, although be careful if you don’t like strong and sometimes course language. I have visited Edinburgh, but feel I only scratched the surface and there’s much more to it than meets the eye if this novel’s anything to go by. What I also find strange is that I’ve read Ian Rankin, but his books have never really shouted at me, but this book most certainly does!

Gus is definitely a character I wish to follow and I can’t wait for the sequel: Gutted.

I highly recommend this book!

Review also here:
http://bookannelid.wordpress.com/2008/09/15/paying-for-it-a-gus-drury-novel-by-t... ( )

Straight out of the gate this book forces the reader to consider a hard truth: "it doesn't look good to be moved by things like funerals and death." While you chew on that dark notion, Black's story picks up speed and keeps going, hurtling along its frantic arc as fast as its protagonist, hard-drinking ex-journalist Gus Dury, can take it.

Set in Edinburgh, it's steeped with new-century Scottish atmosphere, and it made me long to experience the city behind the facade - me a Californian who's never gotten anywhere near the UK. I think sometimes American readers fall hard for the language and the history and the melancholy and the romance of dissolution, none of which we can lay legitimate claim to. Count me among the guilty, but it my enthusiasm for PAYING FOR IT goes beyond all that, due to Black's relentless storytelling.

Dury drinks, and he works hard to pretend his ties to other people don't hold him. His ex-wife. His neighbor. The father of a friend. A girlfriend. And, inevitably, his father, a horror who - diminished by age and health - still has the power to drive him away, but not before ripping the scabs off decades-old hurts.

Distracting Dury from his slow self-erosion takes a series of acts so base that they cut through all his layers of remove. They are both personal and institutional and the reader burns with rage along with Dury as he scrapes the bottom of his resources to fight back. Like Bruen's Taylor, Dury works outside the system, both of it and rejected by it and sick at heart at its failures.

It is not hard to root for Dury - it is only hard to put the book aside without knowing what bleak avenue will call him next and if he can weather one more fresh assault.