William McIlvanney

At the end of 1903, in working-class town in the West of Scotland, Tam Docherty's youngest son, Conn is born. Tam is determined that life and the pits won't swallow up his boy the way it has him. Courageous and questioning, Docherty emerges as a leader of almost indomitable strength, but in a close-knit community tradition is a powerful opponent.

A woman driver, of course!" had been Dr. Richard Guyse's impatient inward comment as he braked and swerved to avoid a collision with the open car door of the unknown but attractive young girl. He wondered briefly who she was and then promptly forgot her. That was a trick of mind training on which Doctor Guyse prided himself. He could always switch his concentration to the important details of his busy doctor's life - yesterday's operation, today's X-ray, tomorrow's problematical new case - to the exclusion of everything else. Doctor Guyse did not know it then, but his meeting with Lysbet Marlowe was the beginning of a strange disturbance in his powers of concentration.

Eck Adamson, an alcoholic vagrant, summons Jack Laidlaw to his deathbed. Probably the only policeman in Glasgow who would bother to respond, Laidlaw sees in Eck's cryptic last message a clue to the murder of a gangland thug and the disappearance of a student. With stubborn integrity, Laidlaw tracks down a seam of corruption that runs through all levels of Glaswegian society.