Where would the private detective (or any other cherished mainstay of popular fiction, really) be without oaths? Whether private or delivered to someone now dead or as a matter of public record, we count on oaths and promises (I am not a crook, I never had sex with that woman, I will uphold the blah, blah, blah) to give us a direction to head in. So when, at the close of one book a character makes a promise to him/herself (the reading audience) about what they will absolutely never/always do in the future we know that next time out we can look for them to break that promise.

Take J. McNee the private investigator of Scottish author Russel D. McLean’s books. If at the end of The Good Son, let’s say that he’d had his fill of being used and manipulated (not to mention just about made dead) by gangster and master puppeteer David Burns and swears it informally. You could reasonably assume that in fact he has only begun to be manipulated by that evil dude.

Of course, he doesn’t know it yet.

So, when, as The Lost Sister opens, a girl goes missing and he’s asked to assist a journalist’s investigation it’s just another day at the office... until he finds out who the child’s godfather is. No points for guessing. How is it that someone as loathsome as Burns has ended up with a sacred trust, a guardianship for a young innocent? And now that she and by association, Burns, appears to have been made a victim, how could McNee walk away?

He tries.

Yeah, sort of, but the more he learns about the missing girl the more drawn to her and her story he becomes. There’s something about innocent victims that’s like mother’s milk for soft-hearted tough guys like McNee, who comes equipped with all the baggage we expect from our hardboiled detectives. He wears his tarnished nobility well, but it’s McLean’s relentless psychic, and physical punishment of  his character that really drives home the melancholy, the romantic, brooding resolve that is why I’m drawn to detective fiction in the first place.

There’s something in the water across the pond that’s creating my favorite American-style PI writers out of y’know, Europeans. With The Lost Sister, you can go ahead and place McLean and McNee solidly in the company of Ken Bruen’s Jack Taylor, Tony Black’s Gus Drury and Ray Banks’ Cal Innes as honorary Yanks. And if you’re wondering just how patronizing I can be, eh… Yeah, I guess that’s about the limit. They’ve got their own thing going over there and to say that they do it well would be underselling it. If you’re looking for some ponderous violence and some earnest redemption seeking, this one’s right up your alley.

You have a favorite European PI?

Jedidiah Ayres writes fiction and keeps the blog Hardboiled Wonderland.