More Words, Deeper Hole

From your description, I may actually want to read this book. And after all, it should be a plus for a book to be on an award shortlist - even an award that has an idiosyncratic preference. I haven't read a lot of Macleod. I recall one lead character who was extremely sure that their initially courteous encounter with the potentially opposing force would turn bloody, and so it did - but that was the author's decision. So the author could be just grumpy. Robert Carnegie rja.carnegie@excite.com