If The Killing Tide was about place, sense and people, then Lin Anderson’s new police procedural The Wild Coast brings us menace, risk and trust. This new title is, like the the previous in the series, billed as ‘a Rhona MacLeod thriller’, but like Tide at least it’s an ensemble piece that brings together rounded, assured characters and puts them up against a gang of abusers and murderers. The result is a novel that is darker than I remember Anderson’s previous work being, but which goes out of its way to reassure the reader.

Look, you still get the place, sense and people. This time, the contrast is between Glasgow’s night time economy and student clubs in particular, and the idyllic wild camping sites up the west coast. Expect to learn about different kinds of soils and sands. (I probably spent too much time trying to check out how dunes really work and too little time trying to figure out how many young women would spend their time in ‘Nice n Sleazy’ before heading up to Arisaig with a kayak or a bicycle.) Anderson makes sure that she describes what her characters see, feel, taste, hear and smell. These are three dimensional creatures with all five senses reporting loud and clear. And the people…this is a close-knit community even if it feels a little more homogenous than before.

That homogenity in the group might be more marked because it’s under attack – there’s menace on the cliffs and in the clubs. People with fake police IDs. Protectors who aren’t what they seem. Doctored CCTV footage. The criminals have help inside Police Scotland. McNab in particular is marked out to receive revenge for trying to put an abuser behind bars. And if we’re used to watching our police friends deal with it all with a mix of bluster and jazz, we have no answer to the two children rendered speechless by what they see and what they fear.

Yet this is a novel that can make its reader feel brave. We watch McNab and Janice make calculated risks (and, in fairness, some risks that aren’t calculated at all). McNab in particular puts himself in place to be framed simply because he wants to act on a hunch. I really enjoyed feeling that sense of confidence, that the occasion required action. There’s balance, though. We yell at McNab, just as his colleagues do. And throughout it all, there’s a warmth…which brings us to trust.

There are balances of trust and betrayal all the way through this novel. There’s a fictional betrayal that drives the warped ideology of the incels behind the murders. There’s the betrayal felt by the children when the adults fail to prevent the disappearance of their parents. There’s the betrayal by bent coppers (and a double betrayal to boot – no honour among thieves), and a betrayal felt by McNab’s colleagues when it seems that he’s done something really out of character. But all that contrasts with the trust: that the team feel for each other, the trust to and from their guvnor Bill, that some at least of the public have in Glasgow’s finest. This team feels so close-knit and Anderson gets us to identify in some strange non-police way with them.

That means that although the topic is dark, and provides less hanging out at jazz clubs than we managed last time, The Wild Coast veers strangely close to cosy crime at times. There are moments of quiet satisfaction and warmth alongside the anger, worry and regret. It feels sometimes as though this series is not as well known as it deserves to be. Let’s put that right. Do read this book. Read it in Glasgow. But perhaps don’t take it camping.

Thanks to Macmillan for the review copy and to Anne Cater for the blog tour invitation.