The Long Knives (The CRIME series, 2)

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He’s hoping we might see it either next year or in 2024. In the interim, Trainspotting the novel will turn 30. Does that feel like half a lifetime ago?

Cosa succede quando un esponente politico conservatore piuttosto noto viene brutalmente assassinato attraverso l'evirazione? E quando qualche tempo prima un altro pezzo grosso stava per subire la stessa sorte? Qualcuno tende a mettere i bastoni tra le ruote a chi indaga per non scoprire altri altarini sordidi. Ha senso andare avanti? Alla fine chi ha il coltello dalla parte del manico sembra farla sempre franca, a meno che non incontri qualcuno che ha parecchio da vendicare. And because of that you do get a lot of shouty advocates on their behalf, or supposedly on their behalf, who are not really as invested in this as they think. That becomes a narcissistic attention-seeking thing on social media as well.” I think people will stop paying bills. I think if we get a really hot summer next year people will be out on the streets. We’re in the process of an ongoing revolution; it’s just happening very slowly.”Suscita inoltre un certo fastidio o quanto meno un distacco di partecipazione (ma forse è solo una mia personale idiosincrasia…) il fatto che il nocciolo dell’intera trama poliziesca sia costruito sul tema dei crimini sessuali più disumani, la violenza sui minori e la redenzione affidata a una vendetta perseguita per anni e messa in atto con una ferocia non inferiore a quella dei criminali primari. You want to look decent with your clothes off,” he tells me. To do otherwise is, he suggests, “disrespectful to your lover.” The story goes that Trainspotting stood to be Booker-shortlisted in 1993 until two judges threatened to quit. Do you ever think what might have been?

At the end of the novel, Welsh even tries to give up on understanding any of it, with one of the detectives having the revelation that all this trans stuff is 'a distraction, mate, a petty diversion from the real farking issues.' Really he would've been better off focusing on all the stuff about elite Tory abusers. He had some good lines about all of that, but it felt like his heart wasn't really in it, which is strange and sad because his previous work he was really able to dig into this kind of thing. It’s funny. Yes and no. People think in very different ways about time. I tend to live in the present. I don’t have any real concept of the future and only a shaky concept of the past. As soon as something is done I move on.” He’s not the only one who thinks so, it seems. “We had the producers coming down to the studio in Brighton from London. We were really nervous but they loved them. By the second song they said, ‘I think we’ve got a musical here.’Lennox non si è mai davvero ripreso da un’aggressione che ne ha marchiato l’infanzia e i suoi incubi sono destinati a peggiorare, dovendo indagare sull’omicidio del deputato Ritchie Gulliver, brutalmente mutilato. Era un politico corrotto, razzista e pieno di nemici ma, rapidamente, i cadaveri si moltiplicano e il modus operandi non cambia, lasciando intendere la mente perversa di un serial killer. Finché, con la scomparsa di Fraser, il nipote dell’ispettore, tutto diventa dannatamente personale e i buoni propositi di Lennox per restare sulla retta via, vacillano pericolosamente.

Eventually Welsh thought, why not? Teaming up with his music partner Steve Mac, “we smashed out these songs. We did it in two weeks basically. We did about 12 songs. They were blues and disco and jazz and country and western. We usually do acid techno.” But as anyone who watched the first series of Crime will know, what begins as straightforward police procedural doesn’t keep to its lane. “That’s the whole idea. You give them what they are used to and then you move it on to darker terrain. You earn the right to take people there. You start off as The Bill and end up as True Detective, basically. That was my ambition for it. And it still is.” Three decades. In that time Welsh’s circumstances have changed dramatically. These days he divides his time between Edinburgh, Miami, London and a place in Oxfordshire where he goes when he needs a bit of peace and quiet to write. After the life Gulliver has led, the suspects are many: corporate rivals, political opponents, the countless groups he's offended. And the vulnerable and marginalised, who bore the brunt of his cruelty - those without a voice, without a choice, without a chance. But this one does. More than their source at Colinton, this dark, narrow passageway evokes these terrible memories. He knows that despite its name, numerous deaths – including those of two children in the 1890s – have taken place in this tunnel.I love writing novels but I’ve never found it enough. I’ve always been involved with music. When Trainspotting took off I got right into film because the opportunity came up and now it’s TV. If you talk to both of them – I can’t put words in their mouths, they can speak for themselves – but my understanding, having spoken to them both, is they’re both feminists and they both believe in trans rights and these two things shouldn’t be mutually exclusive. You can’t make people like that into demonic forces. And what they have in common is that they’re both women. Why is it that we have to do this to any woman who is successful and makes an opinion? Why do they have to be denigrated to that extent?” The Long Knives’ is the second novel in which DI Ray Lennox is the main protagonist, the first being the novel ‘Crime’ and he also featured in the novel ‘Filth’ too. I had read Filth but hadn’t read ‘Crime’ prior to reading this novel, as it can be read as as a stand alone but I actually went and watched the television series, ‘Crime’ which was based on that novel and it gave me a bit of a flavour of what had went on prior to the events in this outing. I bring up the cases of JK Rowling and Joanne Harris, two writers who have been lauded and lambasted on social media for taking positions on the subject.

It seems a bit dilettante but I think if you’re a storyteller you can operate in these different environments. I’ve realised I’m more of a generic storyteller than a novelist as such. I’ve embraced that a little bit. It’s been good for me to own up to that.” How can anybody dislike these two women? “ Welsh asks. “They are both lovely. They are put up on a stake as these modern witches on the internet. There is no archetypal person, there is certainly no archetypal trans person, no archetypal trans experience. That’s why it’s very hard to depict in literature because it’s not established enough to have archetypes. It’s a very small minority. so you have to be sensitive.”Our November/December issue i s available in bookshops as well as Waitrose, WHSmiths, Booth’s and Easons. Trainspotting author Welsh said: “Real life is so grotesque and gruesome anyway. Politicians and leaders are all so grotesque and horrendous that I think, to get any attention, art has to be even more horrendous than them.” The Long Knives (2022) is a sequel to Crime (2008) which in turn was a follow-up of sorts to Filth (1998). It works fine as a standalone novel. Ma, a prescindere da ogni considerazione, I lunghi coltelli è un romanzo che mette in discussione ogni valore morale e che punta a squarciarti la pancia (e non solo...) a causa dei tuoi errori e delle tue debolezze. Irvine Welsh travalica i confini del bene e del male per raccontare - a modo suo - una storia fatta di dolore, rabbia e ingiustizia, dove i buoni diventano cattivi perché tutti sono andati troppo oltre e non si torna più indietro.