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Crime

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Crime

By: Irvine Welsh
Narrated by: Tam Dean Burn Burn
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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

** Now a major Britbox TV show **

Detective Inspector Ray Lennox has fled to Miami to escape the aftermath of a mental breakdown induced by occupational stress and cocaine abuse, and a harrowing child-sex murder case back in Edinburgh.

But his fiancée Trudi is only interested in planning their wedding, and soon Lennox cast adrift, alone in Florida. A coke-fuelled binge brings him into contact with another victim of sexual predation, ten-year-old Tianna, and Lennox flees across the state with his terrified charge, determined to protect her at any cost. But can Lennox trust his own instincts? And can he handle Tianna, while still trying to get to grips with the Edinburgh murder?

© Irvine Welsh 2008 (P) Penguin Audio 2021

 Crime Thrillers International Mystery & Crime Mystery Police Procedural Suspense Thriller & Suspense World Literature Fiction Exciting Scary Crime

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Critic reviews

A triumph... A great, redemptive book... It leaves you wanting more, much more
Powerful, passionate writing... Welsh gets it just right
Powerful... A bracing and engaging read
Crime is by some distance Welsh's most restrained and thoughtful work
You never know what you're going to get with Irvine Welsh, other than guaranteed intelligence. But what you get here is a triumph. A brave take on paedophile rings and the minds, fast and slow, behind them... There are echoes of rebus, of Christopher Brookmyre, even of Carl Hiaasen... There's only one Welsh and you should be reading him again
A disturbing but vital read
An anti-Lolita; a cleverly updated view of those who protect children and those who prey on them. It also works as a slick, fast-paced thriller with a surprisingly coherent and engaging hero
There's a stark immediacy to his prose...frenetically paced thriller
Running jokes and consciously ludicrous moments come thick and fast
The taut dialogue buzzes with snappy ventriloquism. Welsh is one of our most interesting writers on the minutiae of human consciousness
All stars
Most relevant
Enjoyed this book, great hard hitting storyline and Welsh is a master at creating complex characters like Lennox. I have to say though, the American accent (particularly female characters) by the narrator is awful and I had to fight the urge to stop listening as it’s so distracting.

Worth a listen

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This was fairly engaging but Ray Lennox is one troubled soul and so the journey isn’t much fun. I can’t imagine what it’s like to have gone through what he did as a kid, but it doesn’t make for anything other than a pretty break and brutal approach, lacking in the interpersonal japery in books like Trainspotting and so on. I needed a switch to some lighter chat after this…

Pretty bleak

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First off I'm as Scottish as they come, but Welsh really needs to find a new narrator for his books. Burn is all over the place, his delivery and cadence are jarring and make Welsh sound like an even worse writer than he is, also annoying is the way every female character comes across as an air heeded bimbo wether they are or not and the flip flopping between Scottish and American accents when there's no need just sounds awful, Jonathan Hackett is a much better performer of Welsh's books and delivers every word as if he'd written the book himself.

I like Welsh's work, he writes good characters and stories (which being from Scotland, are almost always relatable to a degree) but when he's writing in anything other than the first person perspective his shortcomings as a writer float to the surface with some of his writing coming off as borderline infantile in places, which really isn't helped by Burns reading.

As for the rest, it's initially hard to take Ray Lennox seriously as a hardened detective and tough guy when Welsh spent almost an entire book portraying him as a useless, tiny c*cked waste of space but once you reconcile that this could've just been Robbo being Robbo and realise Ray is very much his own man here, he's a great protagonist, trying his best not to choke on the scum of humanity he's always neck deep in while he attempts to take them down. looking forward to more adventures of Ray Lennox, not so much looking forward to more of Burn's performance.

Liked the story, hated the narration.

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The story is already one of a high intensity without all the timeline skipping, flashbacks, and regular flashes to head voice. I did enjoy it, but can't help but feel the story doesn't have to be as complicated just to show the facets of our protagonist.

all over the place

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This was hard to hear at points, shows the darkest side of humanity and yet somehow at the end it feels like a happy ending.

Dark crime novel

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