Jaded Edinburgh cop and substance-abuser (probably a redundant descriptor in an Irvine Welsh novel...) Ray Lennox has been granted compassionate leave after a particularly traumatic child-murder case leads to a breakdown, and he is spending some time relaxing in Miami with his fiancée. Within 48 hours of landing in the US, however, he finds himself in a situation where a young girl needs his protection from sexual predators, in circumstances where he can't very well turn to the proper authorities for help, and of course all the doubts and questions flying around in his mind from the recent investigation come back to haunt him.

Despite the obviously contrived setup, this turns out to be a very engaging, disturbing book, whose brutal plot somehow manages to deal with the fraught subject of sexual abuse of children in a sensitive and often surprisingly subtle way. Although it is probably a book you will want to read quickly to get it over with... ( )

I just could not get into this book. It started off with all of the standards of an Irvine Welsh book, but it got, boring. Not something I expected from the author. The subject matter was also a little too disturbing. Heald way through I just decided to skip through the rest of the book. Definitely not one of his better books. At least not for me. ( )

El inspector Ray Lennox ha resuelto el caso de asesinato de una niña de siete años. Ha sido recompensado con unas vacaciones para superar su obsesiva implicación en el caso y su depresión posterior. Lennox viaja con su novia a Miami, y se olvida de la cocaína y el alcohol. Pero, después de una discusión, va a un bar, donde se le acercan dos mujeres con cocaína y ganas de fiesta. Los tres acaban en el piso de una de ellas, intentando no despertar a Tianna, la hija que duerme en su habitación. A la mañana siguiente, tras una brutal pelea y la desaparición de la madre, Lennox se encontrará a cargo de Tianna, una precoz lolita de diez años, amenazada por una red de pedófilos, y deberá enfrentarse a los fantasmas del pasado.

The first two thirds of this accessible, fast paced, novel are excellent. It balances the trauma and PTSD being suffered by Det Lennox in the wake of a horrific child abduction, rape and murder and the sheer banality of its perpetrator. As the novel unwraps it's clear that there are other incidents that have led him to be the wrecked addict that he is, but also the most (over?) zealous defender of children.

A night of drug fueled and frankly quite dull sounding indulgence (Welsh as always is great on the the sheer unbridled need driving excessive drug use - not much fun, lots of hard work and hustling, danger and uncertainty ever present) leads him to the young Tiana, who is a best laxly parented and at worst the repeated victim of paedophiles.

Is Lennox just triggered to be over sensitive to preying nonces? He decides he can't take a chance and takes off with Tiana across Florida to the care of "Chet" who may, or may not be Tiana's uncle. In this section Welsh reduces the pressure for an amusing travelogue of central Florida as the nearly middle aged Lennox, and the precocious Tiana get to know each other, Lennox well aware that to the passerby, it might like him who is the abductor of a child.

So far, so engrossing. Child abuse must be an extraordinary difficult subject to write about, and Welsh does an admirable job of doing it without the reader wanting to slam the book shut in disgust. Never is the abuse voyeuristic - never are the paedophiles less than slick and convincing. But the denoument isn't convincing; this isn't to suggest that abuse rings don't exist, but that its hard to believe they operate in the way described here.

So this is well worth reading, but not perfect. But Welsh deserves huge credit for tackling an impossible subject and turning it into a credible human story rather than a diatribe ( )

Phoah. ( )