The Tragicall History of Campbell McCluskie

by Alistair McNaught

The question that haunts Ian Alexander MacDuffy is why the playwright Campbell McCluskie was murdered at 10.30 p.m. on Wednesday 16 June 1954, for that was the very moment that Ian's mother died giving birth to him. The coincidence suggests that some universal meaning may lie behind that gratuitous and painful event. Ian tries to uncover every detail of Campbell's short but colourful the guilt-ridden hypocrisy of his grandfather; his father's success as a shoe manufacturer; his childhood in Clydebank; the death of his favourite aunt; his bewildering role in the D-Day landings; his post-war success as a playwright; his passionate and eventful love life; his ambiguous relations with the criminal underworld; his violent death - because as Campbell himself wrote, in his inimitable style, 'It's all down tae patterns and figures; if you can decipher them, then Auld Nickie-Ben'll dance tae your tune.'

294 pages, Paperback

Published December 11, 2018

Reviews

[Michael Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fab novel that evokes a time and place I knew nothing about: post WW2 Glasgow, and the bohemian world inhabited by playwrights, artists and gangsters. MacNaught has written a deft story - a dark story - with a great deal of levity and insight, I came away from it with a real sense of the post war squalor in urban Scotland, the battles between the careworn, the old morals, the spiviness endemic in society. I was truly sorry to finish this book.

It's also a rather interesting murder mystery, which acts to pull you in.

Compelling stuff from an author I had not read before.