Scottish politics and policing offer a fertile source for fictional plots, and former journalist Campbell Hart makes the most of it. Referendum is the third in his series about Glasgow Detective Inspector John Arbogast. The heft of this series is developing nicely, as the characters and setting gain depth with each book and the plots are layered with threads from the previous books. Arbogast and his police colleagues are familiar now and Hart chooses his political setting, in the run-up to the Scottish Referendum for Independence, with care. Throw in a bent copper, an Irish thug, a BBC reporter, a family struggling with debt, and a nationalist determined to have his moment of propaganda, and there are many narrative threads to follow.
A man dies beneath a bridge, suicide or murder? But then a debt collector calls on his wife, which kickstarts a chain of events involving Arbogast. As well as chasing down a missing teenager, he takes a secret trip to Belfast to research the background of a fellow officer. What he finds there leads straight back to Glasgow and a deadly climax at the partly-constructed new police headquarters building, a sparkling transparent glass and steel building. Is Glasgow’s policing as transparent as its new HQ?

Read my reviews of other Arbogast novels by Campbell Hart:-
WILDERNESS #1ARBOGAST
THE NATIONALIST #2ARBOGAST

If you like this, try:-
‘Business as Usual’ by EL Lindley
‘The Silent Twin’ by Caroline Mitchell
‘Snow White Must Die’ by Nele Neuhaus

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#BookReview REFERENDUM by Campbell Hart @elharto http://wp.me/p5gEM4-225 via @SandraDanby

The Nationalist by Campbell Hart starts with an explosion, on Remembrance Sunday. The culprit: an elderly man, a veteran, wearing a suicide vest. Scottish nationalism, the treatment of veterans and policing in Scotland are the drivers of this narrative. This story hits the ground running and doesn’t stop. It’s a while since I read Wilderness, the first in Campbell Hart’s series about Glasgow detective John Arbogast. The Nationalist was just the tonic after a tiring week, I needed to relax into a book which moved fast and didn’t demand much from me. This took me for a ride and finishes at a sprint as the end game approaches. Right up until the end, I didn’t know how it would finish.
Arbogast is at times an unsympathetic character, his relationship with Rose, DCI Rosalind Ying, gets complicated and he retreats to alcohol. This gets him into trouble, trouble he cannot have foreseen would link him to the Remembrance Sunday terrorist attack. As pieces are pulled together, Hart keeps the mystery going until the end whilst weaving in the complicated politics in Scottish policing, resentments, ambition and dislike.

Read my reviews of other Arbogast novels by Campbell Hart:-
WILDERNESS #1ARBOGAST
REFERENDUM #3ARBOGAST

If you like this, try:-
‘Due Diligence’ by DJ Harrison
‘No Other Darkness’ by Sarah Hilary
‘Dead Simple’ by Peter James

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE NATIONALIST by Campbell Hart @elharto http://wp.me/p5gEM4-21L via @SandraDanby

A blizzard, wild Scottish countryside, bleak landscape. A disappearance. Old rumours. This is an accomplished debut crime novel by an experienced journalist. In Wilderness, Campbell Hart has written a novel set in Glasgow, a place he obviously knows well as it comes alive off the page. Detective Inspector John J Arbogast, fits the profile of detectives in crime novels today: he drinks, is politically incorrect but has his soft side. When he goes to a lap dancing joint, little does he realize he will be back there shortly. On duty.
The story opens with a bitter winter, -14 degrees Celsius and a snow storm. A bus is diverted off the motorway. The last two passengers on board – a woman and young girl – and the bus driver, go missing in the blizzard. And then a local farmer and his son, clearing the road with their tractor, trying to help the stranded bus, find something they didn’t expect. Wilderness explores the world of trafficking and paedophilia as the story traverses from Glasgow to a remote farm and to Turkey, in 2010 and back in time when three young Turkish teenagers are on the cusp of adulthood.
An accomplished debut. If I am being a bit nit-picky, I would suggest another copy-edit is needed – just a few punctuation errors, but nothing that stopped me enjoying the story. Pleased to see this will be a series.

Read my reviews of other Arbogast novels by Campbell Hart:-
THE NATIONALIST #2ARBOGAST
REFERENDUM #3ARBOGAST

If you like this, try:-
‘Jellyfish’ by Lev D Lewis
‘Found’ by Harlan Coben
‘The Farm’ by Tom Rob Smith

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview WILDERNESS by Campbell Hart @elharto http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1BL via @SandraDanby