You Can Call Him Al. If He Can Call You Betty

Roughly this time last year, the following appeared in a post on Crime Always Pays:

“One last pertinent thought on what might well be the most important issue the crime fiction industry will have to face in the immediate future. To wit: has anyone else noticed Shy Al Guthrie’s (right) eyelashes? Like kitten’s whiskers, they are. Enough to make a Grand Vizier kick a hole in his stained-glass harem window.”

  Allan Guthrie is something of a favourite at CAP, but it’s not just his limpid eyes. Put simply, the guy’s a master of the modern noir. Don’t believe me? I can’t blame you. But maybe you’ll believe Laura Wilson over at The Guardian, writing on Guthrie’s latest, SLAMMER:

“Scottish writer Guthrie’s prose is a series of short, sharp shocks, reeking of the visceral brutality of the toughest contemporary noir …”

  The Scotsman likes it too. To wit:

“Allan Guthrie’s SLAMMER succeeds in brilliantly turning the genre on its head in a book as inventive and groundbreaking as it is magnificently written … With SLAMMER, Guthrie has written a superb novel that will leave you thinking hard about life for a long time afterwards, and there’s not much higher praise than that.”

  That second review, by the way, also contains a review of BEAST OF BURDEN by some arm-chancing ne’er-do-well called Ray Banks. A handsome cove, he’ll nonetheless have to get out the old eyelash-straightener if he’s to compete with Shy Al. Raymundo? Would it hurt to use a smidge of mascara once in a while? Think of your audience, man.