Leaving behind the Edinburgh mean streets explored by his sardonic PI Gus Dury and lugubrious DI Rob Brennan, Black heads south to the land of his birth, the windswept west coast town of Ayr. New protagonist, ex-RUC detective Doug Mitchie, arrives home after a 20-year absence under hovering clouds, a wrecked career in Belfast behind him and only a headful of Robbie Burns for solace. In the old family home, his mother is drinking herself to death and there seems little he can do to help. But when he finds his old flame Lyn sheltering from the elements on the outskirts of town, he discovers a purpose for being here. Lyn is in trouble: her son Glenn has been arrested for the murder of his girlfriend, a crime he cannot possibly have committed. Tipped off by Mason, an old comrade on the local force, that a set-up is in place, Mitchie begins to join the dots that lead back to the murder's dockside location. This is an elegiac noir for the memory of a place, delivered in a prose as bleakly beautiful as the setting.

 This article was amended on 16 July 2012 because the original said Ayr is north of Edinburgh. This has been corrected.