Cassie McCullagh

His use of language, you know, some words that I probably shouldn't utter on this show, but a lot of people would find highly offensive.

He doesn't use once.

He doesn't use twice.

He probably uses about 10 times per page.

Wow.

There is a little bit of a sense, I think, that he's running out of steam.

I mean, I don't think that I'm going to be anxiously checking to find out when the next... Well, some of the characters will, without giving away anything, possibly not be in a subsequent book, should there be one.

But it certainly felt like...

this was maybe the last hurrah for the, because, you know, a lot of it was about settling old debts and going back to things that had happened in the train spotting days and making retribution and looking for forgiveness and tying things up.

So there's a slight sense of finality about it, or maybe it's just me having a slight sense of hoping that it's the end.

I suspect that might be our author here too.

There's always a couple of what's next.

I want to finish a book that I was well advanced reading before Mr. Welsh came into my life, which is called American Witness.

And it's a biography of the photographer and filmmaker Robert Frank and

So I want to finish that.

And also I was recommended by a friend whose taste I respect a book of short stories by a guy called Scott O'Connor called A Perfect Universe, which is all stories set in and around California.

And it was the first book I bought when I got to Los Angeles.

I read the first story about a guy whose job is going around killing

repairing telephone boxes and and it's a rumination on on the you know the the end of the telephone box but where they you know where they still exist and people who rely on them and how you know and it's all this and then and then he hears a noise and and basically it he's caught in an earthquake and he's buried below ground for three days and

So that was the first one and there's nine more to come.