Rat Race is Callum McSorley’s third novel that plunges readers into the darkly comic underbelly of contemporary criminal Glasgow with DCI Alison McCoist. And not only does she have to deal the warring underworld, but corruption within her own force’s ranks. BooksfromScotland caught up with Callum McSorley about his favourite Scottish detectives.

Rat Race
By Callum McSorley
Published by Pushkin Vertigo

In 2023, my first crime novel – SQUEAKY CLEAN – was unleashed upon the world, featuring a detective called Alison ‘Ally’ McCoist. The name began as a placeholder, then I enjoyed imagining how other characters (the story being set in Glasgow) would react to it, then nobody asked me to change it, then it ended up on shelves and the actual Ally McCoist found out about it. He’s happy with it – which is good because I’ve now written a full trilogy about DI/DCI McCoist, with the final book Rat Race out this year. 

McCoist is a bit of an acquired taste. Her sense of humour is dry and spiky, she’s almost permanently in a foul mood, her colleagues shun her as either bent or a chronic incompetent who fails upwards. As such, she often works alone, getting up to all sorts of renegade activities in the fight for justice – and, more often, to cover her arse. 

She’s not the conventional detective, and that’s why she’s been so much fun to write about over the last five or so years.  

In celebration of McCoist’s final game, I’ve put together a list of some of my favourite unconventional Scottish sleuths. None of them are polis and a good few have no real business, or desire, to be investigating crimes. I’ve always been a sucker for a reluctant detective.

Rilke – created by Louise Welsh 

None more reluctant than Rilke, the cadaverous, libertine auctioneer from Louise Welsh’s seminal debut novel The Cutting Room from 2002. (After a 20 year drought, Rilke has returned in two more novels to date and we should all be eternally grateful.) 

This book blew my mind when I first read it. It was set in Glasgow, but not like I knew it. The familiar streets blended with this seedy/glamourous world beneath the surface which Rilke moved through in a heady mix of high and low culture, which put me in mind of the LA of hardboiled detective novels.  

Like Marlowe, Rilke has a soft spot for people on the margins, those who would likely be forgotten, and it’s this which keeps him pursuing a case which has landed in his lap, the can kicked down the road. Probably because he himself lives a life close to the edge. 

Welsh turned convention on its head by making a homosexual character the protagonist of her crime story and not the villain. She doesn’t shy away from Rilke’s sexual appetites, whether he’s shagging someone he’s just met in a club toilet or cruising Kelvingrove Park at night for a hookup. He puts himself in precarious situations and drags himself over the finish line of the story battered and bruised. A detective with a glutton for punishment is always a favourite of mine.

Robbie Gould – created by Martin Stewart 

Which brings me to Robbie Gould, hero of Martin Stewart’s novel Double Proof (2024) and the forthcoming Loose Threads (June 2026). Gould’s unique investigative style is to irritate people into spilling information just to be rid of him, which sometimes (often) escalates into them attempting to get rid of him permanently. Despite being a one-time boxer, more often than not he ends up on the receiving end of the doing. And he kind of deserves it. 

He’s a smart arse. He has a knack for poking at people’s tender spots with his acerbic barbs. He’s blunt. Obnoxious. Has no sense of basic social etiquette. Wears shorts and sliders no matter what the occasion. He hates dogs for fucksake. Bury him! 

Oh, also, my favourite detail: he wears an old lady’s plastic rain bonnet to keep his hair dry. He found it in a hedge. ‘Gamechanger,’ he says. 

The further kink to the Gould persona is that a lot of people think he’s psychic. And no matter how much he protests, folk keep hiring him because of this. As a write-to-order novelist, he takes the cases because he needs the money, but there’s a dark, masochistic part of him that also likes the trouble.

Jack Parlabane – created by Chris Brookmyre 

Same could be said for Jack Parlabane. Yes, his journalistic drive to uncover corruption and public wrongdoing is strong, but the sketchy/sometimes illegal means he employs to do so definitely speaks to a pathological desire for self-destruction. Or, at the least, an extreme thrill-seeking problem. 

Chris Brookmyre’s abrasive reporter monkeyed his way up the drainpipe and in through the window of crime fiction 30 years ago in Quite Ugly One Morning (1996) and has put his neck on the line for a scoop several times since. The books move with the years, Parlabane ages, and real-world events inform the plots – one of the joys of which is getting to hear Parlabane’s irate and unfiltered opinions on the hot button issues of the day. 

Parlabane’s quick wit, sarcastic nature and complete intolerance for bullshit (not to mention his way with words: ‘the GB News interviewer [is] a greying posh-boy who looks like the spectral figure haunting a Francis Bacon painting entitled “Divorce”.’) makes him something of a lovable, impish pest, as well as a serious pain in the arse to his many, many enemies.  

His newest outing, Quite Ugly One Evening (May 2026), which marks three decades in fiction for the brilliant and prolific Brookmyre, sees Parlabane attend a fan convention for a 1960s puppet television programme – aboard a cruise ship. Surrounded by water (and rabid nerds) he’s at his very best. 

Eilidh & Morag McIntyre – created by Natalie Jayne Clark 

In Natalie Jayne Clark’s excellent 2025 debut, The Malt Whisky Murders, couple Eilidh and Morag sink all their savings into a dilapidated distillery in order to restore it and make their own whisky. They’ve barely arrived when they discover two corpses, each stuffed into an old barrel, preserved in alcohol for God-knows-how-long. Oh, and the Beeb are about to arrive to shoot a puff piece about the new owners. 

What makes this duo great is the push and pull between them. Their relationship is close, they complement each other in many ways – their current living situation in a wee caravan on site of the distillery is at first cosy and romantic – but they are very different people. Morag is highly organised and pragmatic. Her instinct is to put the bodies back and pretend they never found them. Eilidh agrees at first but then can’t help picking at the scab. 

Eilidh’s brain moves at 100 mph, powered by hamsters in a wheel. She jumps from project to project, her energy crashing in great waves, her hyperfixation on the case carrying her further and further away from Morag as the story goes on.  

The growing strain in their relationship really shows us who these characters are at their most vulnerable. Sleuthing isn’t just for the aloof, impervious Reachers and Holmeses – ‘mon the Eilidhs and Morags! 

Janey & Maggie Devine – created by Frances Crawford 

Janey Devine is 12 years old and lives in Possilpark with her gran, Maggie. Not just a reluctant detective, she is a reluctant witness to a murder. The problem is, she can’t remember what she saw, hence the necessary detective work to piece her memory back together. 

The murder victim is the daughter of a local gangster (alleged gangster) who Janey and Maggie become entangled with in their shared grief. This is A Bad, Bad Place (2026) by debut author Frances Crawford, which evokes the scheme life of 1970s Glasgow with a vivid and unflinching eye, untainted by nostalgia. 

Crawford states in the book’s introduction that she wanted to ‘focus on the effects of violent crime on traditionally overlooked female characters’ and as such, we follow this tale through the eyes of Janey and Maggie, certainly a couple of the most unconventional leads for a crime story in recent times, and two of the most memorable. 

The authenticity and distinction of both voices, considering the age and generation gap between them, is masterful and any reader will come to care deeply about them both. Now when I say ‘the Dynamic Duo’, I’m not talking about Batman and Robin. 

Rat Race by Callum McSorley is published by Pushkin Vertigo, priced £16.99.