Synopsis
With the Christmas season upon him, Detective Sergeant Bruce Robertson of Edinburgh's finest is gearing up socially—kicking things off with a week of sex and drugs in Amsterdam.
There are some sizable flies in the ointment, though: a missing wife and child, a nagging cocaine habit, some painful below-the-belt eczema, and a string of demanding extramarital affairs. The last thing Robertson needs is a messy, racially fraught murder, even if it means overtime—and the opportunity to clinch the promotion he craves. Then there's that nutritionally demanding (and psychologically acute) intestinal parasite in his gut. Yes, things are going badly for this utterly corrupt tribune of the law, but in an Irvine Welsh novel nothing is ever so bad that it can't get a whole lot worse. . . .In Bruce Robertson Welsh has created one of the most compellingly misanthropic characters in contemporary fiction, in a dark and disturbing and often scabrously funny novel about the abuse of everything and everybody.About Irvine Welsh
See more books from this Authora bit of bestiality, involving Bruce’s favorite prostitute and a collie named Angus, that goes hilariously awry).But it founders when Welsh gives his loutish antihero unconvincing moments of reflection (“I feel entrapped by my lust, but when I actually get round to doing it, it just seems so poin...
| Read Full Review of FilthAnother scabrous, lurid, blackly comic novel from America's favorite Scottish enfant terrible, this one does for present-day Edinburgh what James Ellroy does for 1950s Los Angeles. Welsh begins with a
Sep 14 1998 | Read Full Review of FilthIt could, for example, have real worms, or lice or maggots, eating their way through its pages rather than the imaginary one which is gobbling up the novel's protagonist, Detective Sergeant Bruce Robertson, gnawing away at him like the Ebola virus.
Aug 09 1998 | Read Full Review of FilthThis being a cop story, there's a murder to solve, but that plot plays second fiddle to Robertson and his exploits, which involve a trip to Amsterdam, a great deal of angry sex and reckless drug use, and general terrorizing of the populace.
| Read Full Review of FilthFilth is set in Edinburgh and narrated by Bruce Robertson, a macho Protestant copper who, when the book opens, is being inconvenienced by the murder of a black tourist.
Feb 21 2011 | Read Full Review of FilthAn aggregated and normalized score based on 155 user ratings from iDreamBooks & iTunes