I haven't read Louise Welsh before. Her 2002 debut "The Cutting Room" made a big impact and won several awards and led to a sequel 20 years later. In between there has been a trilogy (Plague Times 2014-17), story collections, a non-fiction work on Glasgow and stand-alone novels of which this is her fifth.
Main character Jim Brennan is a criminologist, and Vice Chancellor at the University where he is a professor. We first meet him in 2017 jet-lagged from a flight after a visit to the sister university in Beijing in the waiting room of a Scottish police station where his son has been arrested on drug charges. How much parents are prepared to do for their offspring is a central theme here and Jim finds himself getting deeper into difficult situations as he tries to protect his son.
Brennan is a man who needed to escape his past, academia has saved him from the violent law-breaking of his own father, now dead, but the past has a habit of creeping back and bringing a whole new set of challenges for the ambitious professor.
Plot-wise it is involving enough but I think where it didn't quite shine for me was because I couldn't care for any of the characters, in fact, I almost got a sense of guilty pleasure when bad things happened, and that was right from the start. I'm not convinced that was the author's intention and it seems a bit of a risky strategy. Nobody also had that obvious streak of villainy which can also appeal. I think there's potentially a point where readers might feel they don't want to continue reading about these lives until the past and present slot more in synch and we get a more immediately involving situation as the dubious politics of institutions and global influences on cash-strapped educational establishments brings a whole new perspective. This was a solid thriller which certainly has interested me in Louise Welsh's backlist.
To The Dogs is published in the UK by Canongate on 18th January 2024. Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy.
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