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THE TWILIGHT TIME is a gritty first novel from former Glasgow police officer Karen Campbell – and you just know she's been there, done that, got the tee shirt, and met most of the weird people who flit in and out of the pages. Her main character, Anna Cameron, is a new sergeant assigned to the Flexi Unit where uniformed and plain clothes officers work together on street offences. Except all's not tickety-boo – her former partner Jamie is on the team, and another colleague, Jenny Heath, has obviously taken a dislike to her. Oh, and the ghastly Superintendent gets around in a Sinclair C5. And it's pretty grim on the Glasgow streets as well, as Campbell presents us with gritty realism of the grittiest type, occasionally verging on too much information already. Someone's carving up the faces of prostitutes, an old man who Anna's taken a shine to is murdered, and there's drug dealing and racist violence by the cartload. The first half of the book is electric, but the middle section becomes somewhat bogged down as Anna does the maverick copper off the case act. And some passages feel a touch too much like a writing group exercise – it didn't come as too much of a surprise to discover that Campbell has done a university creative writing course. Even when the book needs a fresh injection of energy, little gems of scenes shine through, including Anna's meal at a Polish club, and her Christmas Day visit to her father's grave. At its best (which is fortunately more than two thirds of the book), THE TWILIGHT TIME is dark, intense and like a nightmare going on in Anna's head. There are some slippages in points of view, and the novel works best when it's either inside Anna's head or in that of Jamie's wife, Cath. But it's an exceptionally strong debut novel from a very talented new author who, with a bit of luck, will soon shake off the standard comparisons with Denise Mina and Ian Rankin.
Reviewed by Sharon Wheeler, May 2008
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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