Name: Whisky from Small Glasses
Rating: 3.6 (5 reviews)
ISBN: 9780857908421

Denzil Meyrick

‘Soon to be mentioned in the same breath as authors such as Alex Gray, Denise Mina and Stuart Macbride ... very impressive’ – Ian Baillie, Lennox Herald DCI Jim Daley is sent from the city to investigate a murder after the body of a woman is washed up on an idyllic beach on the West Coast of Scotland. Far away from urban resources, he finds himself a stranger in a close-knit community. Love, betrayal, fear and death stalk the small town, as Daley investigates a case that becomes more deadly than he could possibly imagine, in this compelling novel infused with intrigue and dark humour. Also available from Denzil Meyrick: The Last Witness, Dark Suits and Sad Songs and The Rat Stone Serenade.

A DCI Daley Thriller (Book 1) - Large measures, dark hearts

Whisky from Small Glasses

Tim Pendry

This is a solid enough police procedural with its selling point being that it is set in the Scottish Western Isles. It has excellent characterisation, a fast pace and some very good descriptive writing. I enjoyed it even if it was bloody obvious who the murderer was two thirds of the way through. This sets me a problem. I don't do spoilers and this is a detective novel but I have a complaint about this book that is really a much broader complaint about a disturbing cultural trend. I am going to have to dance around this and try and mislead you as to the killer while telling a truth. That truth starts with procedural crime being read mostly by women. Women are understandably and naturally predisposed to fear violence from rogue, unbalanced or sociopathic men. Ergo, crime novels and TV series are increasingly about violence perpetrated on women. Is this really because criminal activity is centred on sexual violence of an extreme nature on women or is it because the concept sells? I think it is the latter. All human beings, men or women assuage their fears and express their aspirations and dreams through the imagination. This is as true of the wonderful Marvel and DC fantasy films for the adolescent in us and for the masculine action thriller as for the sexual or existential depredations of the crime or horror genre. Let's work through our fears and desires. Nothing wrong with that so long as we know it is fantasy. Unfortunately, the tropes are having a deleterious cultural effect in the case of the criminal procedural whether produced by the BBC, Scandinavian production companies on a roll or cynical publishers. They calm old private fears but create new social fears that are now neurotic. Feminists are beginning to complain from their perspective about the repeated images of women being raped, brutalised, trafficked and killed but they are missing the point. They seem to think that men get some deviant pleasure from this but it is not men who watch or read this stuff at all. It is women who are being catered for. The initial fantasy is that 'men are potentially like this' but this becomes the fantasy that 'men are actually like this'. What starts off as the working out of a natural if often irrational fear becomes opportunistically marketed as something more. It is men who suffer from the constant reinforcement that they are a threat or socially problematic when there is no evidence of anything of the kind (at least to the intense degree implied by the memes involved) - and yet is women who are the true social victims here. It is women who are constantly placed into a psychological position where they are surrounded by threats. Most see through it but some do not and so we see in our culture a rising neurosis of fear - similar to the hysterical paranoia over terrorism. The chances of being killed in a terrorist attack are very limited and yet our entire culture has been skewed, especially in terms of expenditures, by the small threat that there is. Women too live in a culture of fear constructed as a negative aura in social discourse. The truth is that there are a few seriously deranged and disturbed males out there and women are well advised to be pragmatic and realistic about placing themselves in risky situations. Society needs to recognise this and go the extra mile in small things like street lights and large things too. But the level of fear and anxiety engendered in commercially opportunistic literature and film by the market is damaging women, not because of the much mooted 'objectification' (the radical feminist argument) but because it is a lie. The exaggerated crimes that fuel these genres are rare. This is not to diminish the lack of respect and molestation in society that needs dealing with - preferably in draconian ways when proven - but such every day stories do not 'make good copy'. Things seem to need to be hyped up in order not only to entertain but create catharsis. A few great works of art would normally help in doing this, waking us up (especially men in this case) to the wrongness of treating women as mere objects of use. But this is not what is happening in our culture. What is happening is the normalisation of extreme terror for entertainment. It is rare to find myself on the same side as the radfems but we converge on this. I think their analysis is mistaken but they are noting the same phenomenon that disturbs me - the exaggeration of sexual violence for market reasons. In fact, it demeans men as much as women. The tragedy of this book is that a rather good writer has allowed himself to be trapped into this mode with its plot cliches, p0ssibly because he or his publisher thought it was 'marketable' to be so. It certainly meant that the killer was far too predictable (a caricature) far too soon. And, yes, I would read the next and other books in the series if only because the teasers in the book clearly directed the reader to more 'realistic' tales of organised crime. I do not condemn the writer - he is a victim of our market culture as much as the rest of us.

Amanda Wells

Oh. My. Goodness.

I'm going to be honest - I initially picked this up for the cover. The blurb confirmed it would be interesting to me in genre and setting, and my goodness that was a good call.

A really well paced book, with bursts of action, but a realistic depiction of police work. 
I was literally pacing towards the end as the climax did it thing, and that's what pushed me to a 5 star review of this one. I was emotionally invested, and my heart was actually racing.

Definitely recommend it - especially if this type of book is your thing.

Whisky from Small Glasses A DCI Daley Thriller (Book 1) - Large measures, dark hearts

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