Water of Death (Quintilian Dalrymple.) - Hardcover

On the bright side, crime's down, tourism's up, and the Edlott lottery (a "citizen's" only shot at betterment) is doing land-office business. A pity, then, that recent winner Fordyce Kennedy's gone missing and Frankie Thomson, a demoted Auxiliary Guardsman, has turned up dead on the banks of the Water of Leith. Ironically, Frankie died of nicotine poisoning after sampling a contraband bottle of "Ultimate Usquebaugh." Usquebaugh is Gaelic for "the water of life," or whisky.

Enter Quintilian Dalrymple, Water of Death's noirish, blues-haunted hero, a freelance detective (himself a demotee from the powerful Auxiliary Guard thanks to exploits detailed in 1999's award-winning Body Politic and 2000's The Bone Yard) who's reluctantly tapped by the Guardians when things get deadly. With the help of his Guardsman sidekick, Davie, and the sufferance of a by-the-book superior, Quint is tasked with finding Fordyce, finding Frankie's murderer, and finally, finding Fordyce's murderer after he, too, succumbs to Ultimate Usquebaugh. In the meantime, Quint juggles the professional-intimate relationship he's having with the city's Senior Guardian, Sophia, the reemergence of his ex-lover, Katharine, and the fact that Katharine, Sophia, and countless others are possible committers of the mounting crimes.

Intelligent, breezy, and surely paced, Paul Johnston's wryly humorous mystery succeeds despite its basic whodunit plot. Clever dialogue and likeable (if not wholly fleshed) characters abound, and the near-future setting provides enough diversion and sociopolitical food-for-thought to nicely carry the day. -- Michael Hudson