Callum McSorley (2023) Squeaky Clean

Callum McSorley (2023) Squeaky Clean.

Not many people read the Acknowledgements. They’re on page 383, at the end of a book, I read in one go. It’s one of those books I read and think I could write—and have written versions of it. Working class people having a shite life. I read a review on Peter Turns the Page and knew this would have been the kind of book I like because it’s about people like me. The author’s job is to make their shite life coherent, slightly amusing and worse than death. Callum McSorley ticks those boxes. I’ll be reading his latest novel.

Let’s talk about protagonists and inciting incidents. There’s two storylines or stories. DI Alison McCoist. Get it. Ally McCoist. Scottish fitba player. Hun. Commentator of all things Rangers. Snidey comments follow her about—with a name like that—like the puppy she stole from a raid on a puppy farm. But she’s squeaky clean, really. She’s been set-up and hauled over the coals (cliched I know) by her superiors for fucking up in a big case in which she has been set up to fail and fall, caught het. Demoted without being demoted. Quarantined in the office without being sacked.

The main protagonist, Davey Burnett works in a carwash. Callum McSorley said he worked in a carwash. It’s one of the shitey jobs I’ve not done. Most folk I knew when we were growing up didn’t have a car. Those that did polished it on Sunday. Show-off bastards. If you do something a million times, you get good at it. Burnett knows his lances from his mops from his hoovers. His gaffer, Sean, makes enough cash to pay the lads, smoke a bit of weed, and propagate the latest conspiracy theories.

Davey hasn’t got much of a life but nothing much to worry about other than being split up from his ex—whom he still loves—and being separated from his five-year-old daughter, which drives him mental.

The inciting incident that gets the story jump started is believable in an unbelievable way, which is just perfect. Davey is in a bit of a dwam at work, when his mum phones him. She reminds him that he’s due at court for a custody hearing—involving whether he should get continued access to his daughter—and he’s got ten minutes to get to the centre of toon.

That’s OK, if he had a helicopter. But he hasn’t. What he does have is the keys to a big fuck-off vehicle he’s just valeted and washed belonging to Paulo (Paul McGuinn). Any poor bastard that scratches Paulo’s car, well, we know the type from observing the moron’s moron Trump, from afar. Petty vindictiveness is a starter but Paulo likes to think of himself as a businessman with perks like shagging all the young girls he imports with drugs and sets up in brothels. He’s not to be crossed because he’s king of the underworld. Not the forgiving type. Lest yeh forget.

Paulo ties the Squeaky Clean story between McCoist and Burnett and keeps the narrative moving and fresh. Simple questions, could this happen, and whatever happened to Ally McCoist? Read on.    

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