Dark Side of the Moon

Starred review from February 27, 2017
Scottish author Wood’s outstanding first novel focuses on a bumbling group of petty Glasgow criminals, who undertake the improbable theft of the Dark Side of the Moon, a rare purple diamond worth perhaps £30 million. The brains of the group is Norman Boddice, a man whose territory and reputation are eroding but who can count on a number of lackeys dependent on his goodwill. Each of them gets to tell part of the story. Davie Prentice is one of Boddice’s leg breakers, Gordon Kyle the other; Alistair Boag is a hanger-on who has some skill with electronics and explosives; identical twins Campbell and John Wilson are tattoo artists. Reluctantly, they all buy into Boddice’s grandiose plans for a spectacular theft from the store Trusdale and Needham, where the diamond will be on display for five weeks as part of the City of Jewellery festival. The entertaining journey includes some wonderfully funny interludes, some cruelty that rebounds unexpectedly, and clever surprises.

Starred review from February 15, 2017
This splendid offering is tagged a caper novel, but watch out. Anyone expecting a romp, like Donald E. Westlake's Dortmunder novels, is in for a surprise. The thieves are a collection of maladroits, and the dialogue zings, as in Westlake and numerous other caper crafters, but there's also something much darker lurking below the immensely readable surface of this powerhouse of a novel. Glasgow crime boss Boddice is out to steal a diamond from its display, where it sits like a drop of blood on a dagger point. His crew includes a weary collector of drug money from assorted schemie-scum; an ex-con hoping to steal enough to escape his life on the streets; and twins who own a tattoo parlor but have trouble getting the words right in their creations ( Sex Stud becomes Sex Dud on a client's groin). Slapstick aside, things can turn vicious in a moment. An infant dies, or a man is killed with paint in a scene one would like to turn away from but can't. The revelations in the twisty finale are backdropped by a conflagration that is a magnificent piece of writing purely on its own. In all, a fiercely beautiful novel.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)