"Random" is the story of a serial killer like none I've read before. This is not some Hannibal Lecter evil-genius anti-hero, nor the all too common I-like-to-cause-women-pain serial killer, or even the Dexter "dark passenger" kind of killer.

This is a story of a disciplined man, following a plan with minimal emotional involvement. A plan that will get him an outcome that he greatly desires.

At least, that's how it starts.

Executing the plan costs our killer. It eats away at his humanity. It stresses him to the point where he struggles to keep control and starts to give way to paranoia and anger.
The whole story is told from the killer's point of view and we get to watch him fall apart.

"Random" delivers many of the things that attract people to serial killer books: tension and suspense, ingeniously managed kills, a strong sense of place, a high level of plausibility and a level of graphic violence that is convincing enough to be disturbing but never crosses the line into voyeuristic murder porn.

Yet the most interesting thing about the book is not who gets killed and how but the why of it all. The motivation behind the plan. The end game that you won't see coming. This is all brilliantly done through interior dialogue and memories. Memories are important in this novel. Our killer says:

"Memories are like landmines. You never know which one will blow up in your face".
Our killer is a fully developed character. Someone I could feel pity for. Someone who has lost himself. Someone doing things that he knows are unforgivable but which he makes himself do anyway.

Being inside this man's head is not a pleasant experience but it's not a trip to loony town either. It's unpleasant because any of us might find ourselves where he is.
The plot is clever and the pacing works. It's an astonishing debut by an author I want more of.

I picked up "Random" as part of my Thirty Firsts 2019 TBR Reading Challenge.The book is marketed as "Narey and Winter #1" so I expected it to be the first in a series of police detective stories, set in Glasgow, about two police detectives.

In reality, I spent all my time in the killer's head. Narey features throughout the book as a kind of remote threat of justice. Winter didn't make an appearance. I have no idea where book two will go.

It sounds to me like "Random" was a successful one-off novel that begged for an encore. Craig Roberstons writing is good enough to convince me to give the next book a try and find out where it goes. ( )

This is a tightly-woven thriller which escapes the usual humdrum feeling of Brit crime lit. At first it appears to be a fairly standard 'serial killer does bad stuff' with some ingenious methods for his murders. But then the plot opens out and the killer becomes a rather more sympathetic character, as he gets unwillingly involved in the Glaswegian underworld.

Initially I was a little concerned about the 'hoots mon' aspects of the text; I have found some books which contain big chunks of local dialect to be a bore or occasionally indecipherable. But that really wasn't the case with 'Random'; instead the author constructed an authentic-sounding narrative, sprinkled with the gallus grey, hard-faced nature of the city in all its bleakness. There are some thoroughly gripping sections -- like when the killer takes a real dislike to one of his intended victims, an unfortunate supermarket checkout woman. You can feel the bile in his throat with each bitter description as he becomes more and more angry with her -- and, we suspect, with himself...

The descriptions of low lives, drunkards, yuppie boozers in the wine bar and so on are very entertaining. There's a couple of very tense scenes where the protagonist's future hangs from a thread, and a very neat finale. We don't see very much of the Police investigators, or indeed any of the supporting characters: the novel is focused entirely on the killer himself. That means we have to endure the literary device of newspaper cuttings to fill in the blanks (not my favourite style, but it worked OK).

Overall this is a well-paced, intelligent and easy to read thriller. The concepts aren't very new, but it's delivered with panache and I enjoyed reading it. (With one proviso: the author keeps using the word 'that' when he should be using 'who' and I know it's a tiny whinge but it starts to irritate after a while).

I'll certainly look for Craig Robertson's next book on the strength of this one.

If you like this kind of gritty thriller then you may also enjoy [b:A Last Act of Charity|22602019|A Last Act of Charity (Killing Sisters, #1)|Frank Westworth|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1404054107s/22602019.jpg|42088165] by [a:Frank Westworth|576653|Frank Westworth|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1407492635p2/576653.jpg]. I'm a tiny bit biased about it (reader: I married the author...) but figure that it'll appeal to readers with similarly weird interests...
7/10 ( )

Fast paced and filled with nice observational details to delineate characters and really put you in the shoes of the serial killer who becomes known as the cutter. The plot was a bit simplistic and I didn't really (semi spoiler alert) buy into the idea that vengeance was a strong enough motive to precipitate such an extreme response as becoming a serial killer... ( )

AUTHOR Robertson, Craig
TITLE: Random
DATE READ: 02/27/2016
RATING 4.5/B+
GENRE/PUB DATE/PUBLISHER/# OF PGS Crime Fiction/ 2010/ Simon & Shuster / 329 pgs
SERIES/STAND-ALONE: #1 DS Rachel Narey
CHARACTERS The Cutter/serial killer
TIME/PLACE: 2009 / Glasgow Scotland
FIRST LINES She was talking but I couldn't take anything in. Her words bounced off me.
COMMENTS: Not really sure why this is considered a series … because the main character was very much the focus of each page and DS Narey was rarely even mentioned. What I did like about this character … not really the likeable serial killer ala Dexter. Dexter has a whole history/ childhood w/ evil that nurtured his bent psyche/ different view of evil Wheras the cutter is out for revenge for the driver who killed his daughter when she was crossing the street. Not only was his daughter killed but his life was forever changed. His wife never recovered from this loss, he lost his job. I found myself having some amount of sympathy for him altho' not his actions. ( )

Promising debut thriller from Craig Robertson, written from the viewpoint of a sort of serial killer. It is quite a relief to find that this debut was a stand alone, rather than the first in a "thrilling new series". Whilst it is very readable and contains a couple of interesting plot twists, I felt that the writing style was a bit too simple, given the viewpoint. I probably would have tried his second book anyway, but I purchased books 1-3 as a set, so I definitely will. ( )