Another one I wrote for coffee. I read all of MacBride's stuff over the summer of '09 because it was entertaining and I needed entertainment.

This is the fifth book to feature Logan McRae, whose thankless job it is to police the mean streets of Aberdeen. Familiarity with McRae’s previous adventures is not essential to your enjoyment of this instalment, a police procedural that leaps straight in with both booted feet first, opening with an armed raid that goes badly wrong, but which leads to the discovery of a horribly mutilated Polish immigrant. An attack by a psychopathic racist is the obvious conclusion, but McRae’s investigation hints at something even darker and more disturbing. Labouring under the verbal lashes of his immediate superiors, the foul-mouthed, chain-smoking DI Steele and the withering sarcasm of DCI Finnie, while attracting the unwelcome attentions of local mob boss Simon McLeod, McRae’s a good policeman plagued by bad luck. Unravelling the plot takes him all the way to Poland and some of the nastiest secrets from the fall of the communist government.
A dark streak of gallows humour raises this offering above the standard grim’n’gruesome serial killer fare, as does a gift for the creation of memorable characters and hilarious dialogue. Explosions of bloodcurdling, hair-raising violence veer across the line into farce as the propensity of local criminals to view police raids as opportunities for a good punch-up lay waste to carefully planned strategies, leading to chaos and confusion which MacBride handles with skilful aplomb.
The policemen and women in Blind Eye are a cheerfully slobby, human lot, who like their drink, kit-kats, bacon butties and endless cups of tea, which keeps the whole book well grounded. Dark, funny, suspenseful and entertaining, if Blind Eye is your first Stuart MacBride novel, it probably won’t be your last.