DIRECT ACTION: GRANITE CITY CRIME
a novel by Scottish crime writer Lance Black
ISBN 978-0-09555450-0-9

In my late thirties I returned to University to study law. I have discovered since that many writers have emerged out of the gloomy pit that is a legal career: at least that’s how it looked to me after an accelerated LLB, DLP and LLM. Unless you just love infinite paperwork and endless bureaucracy, forget the law.

However, the first semester of a law degree is cleverly designed to keep you interested. Here you will study Criminal Law, real law as I like to call it, featuring all the weaknesses, passions and deviancies of human nature: rape and murder being the highlights. Crime is made amusing by the oratory of the lecturer, but of course the tragedy is not reflected in the academic’s anecdotes: the sleepwalker who battered his baby to death because he thought it was a many headed snake; the girl who consented to underage sex (moot rape) because her music teacher told her it would unblock her passageways and improve her ability to blow a wind instrument (hoots of laughter from the baby law students).

But, sadly you must start at the very bottom in law. Even at 39 with years of business success, a Physics degree and a Masters in Optics, I faced serving a Dickensian apprenticeship remunerated in peanuts. Law is for the young, who have time on their side and a cheap lifestyle. Perhaps it was my love of Robert Donat in the Winslow Boy or Henry Fonda in Twelve Angry Men that fed my interest in legal defences including provocation, self-defence and non-insane automatism which all feature in Direct Action, Aberdeen’s Crime Thriller. I had seen myself as a brilliant defender of justice, but movies are movies and law is law!

Instead I married real life experiences (being attacked while sitting in my car with my girlfriend) with hard law to create a fast-paced thriller — Direct Action. I was also increasingly depressed by anti-social behaviour including road rage (often by normally nice people — friends included); boy racers keeping me awake at night, and general loutish drunkenness. And the police are never there when you need them!

I threw all these elements into the mix and added some terrific locations for crimes, such as Dunnottar Castle near Aberdeen, to create Direct Action — a fast-paced, in-yer-face crime thriller!

Direct Action sold thousands of copies in Aberdeen. Everyone loved it except a few male readers who complained about the graphic sex. Strangely female readers made no such complaint. Direct Action now has a colourful new jacket and is available at Waterstones, WH Smith, Amazon and other good booksellers.

If you can’t find it please email me at: lance.black@yahoo.com