DETECTIVE Sergeant Gus Thoroughgood is back on the streets of Glasgow in The Longest Shadow. Beginning on top of Scotland's iconic Wallace Monument, when a skeleton from Thoroughgood's past threatens to put the full stop on his future, the action comes at the reader like a runaway train. In the third instalment of RJ Mitchell's gritty Glaswegian crime thriller series, Thoroughgood finds himself in pursuit of a suspect he believes is the psychopathic leader of a vicious gang wanted for murder and abduction. The streets of Glasgow's West End and city centre are the location for a high octane pursuit that leaves the reader gasping for breath, before culminating in a life and death struggle on top of one of Glasgow's most famous landmarks, the Rennie Mackintosh designed Glasgow school of Art - but does Thoroughgood have the right man? Just as he defies death to thwart the gang, Thoroughgood's complicated love life ensnares him in the battle for control of the Roxburgh Whisky dynasty. Tension builds towards a nail-biting crescendo as the DS attempts to identify the cold-blooded killer who is intent on wiping out the nation's most famous whisky family.
While the finger of guilt, in an apparently haphazard investigation, is being pointed at a powerful Triad leader, clues from a 70 year-old war time diary lead the DS to realise nothing is as it seems. But with his growing feelings for Victoria Roxburgh, the last of the Dynasty's surviving siblings, clouding his judgement, Thoroughgood finds himself in a fight to the end with a ruthless foe whose identity shocks them both.