Andrew Nicoll has already successfully challenged several conventions: he is a former lumberjack who became a political journalist and he is a Sun reporter who writes sensitive short stories. But perhaps his greatest achievement is in confronting that waspish little comment from Russell Lynes about journalists and novels: “Every journalist has a novel in him, which is an excellent place for it.”
Smashing that idea completely, Dundee-based Nicoll found the time while being political editor of the Scottish Sun to write his first novel, The Good Mayor, which was acclaimed internationally and won prestigious prizes at home.
He built up a strong international fan base with The Good Mayor, so his second, The Love and Death of Caterina, available online and in bookshops, should also sell well.
It thoroughly deserves to do well. Nicoll is a very classy and accomplished writer. It is not just that he writes more beautifully than some of his contemporaries in Scotland today (although he certainly does that), but he is also refreshingly original.
The Good Mayor was described by some as a form of magic realism. Set in a made-up world somewhere between the Balkans and Dundee, it contained fantastical characters, a narrator who was a bearded nun, and a pangolin.
The Love and Death of Caterina is more grounded and realistic, although it too is set in an imaginary land – this time an indeterminate, landlocked South American country ruled by an oppressive military dictatorship. But there are no mystical narrators, flights of fancy or strange, half-imagined characters in this one. As a result, it is tighter, more direct and sharper.
The writing is as good – if not better – than in The Good Mayor. Nicoll’s real skill is in his descriptions which are, if anything, even more sparingly written and wonderfully evocative as they were in The Good Mayor.
The Love and Death of Caterina centres around a local literary star, Luciano Valdez, who has writer’s block. He meets Caterina who, he hopes, will help him unlock his writing once again. It doesn’t work out that way.
Indeed – and this is one of the interesting twists of the book – the reader knows right from the start what is going to happen. This is the opening line: "Only a few weeks after it happened, Luciano Hernandez Valdez was almost unable to believe that he had ever been a murderer."
But, even though the end is flagged up so early and so clearly, Nicoll manages to make the progress to that point compelling and unexpected. He seems to enjoy indicating the way the book is going to go, then veering off at a tangent just when the reader least expects it.
In that way, The Love and Death of Caterina is a more complex but also a more polished book than The Good Mayor. The writing is better than the first book, the structure is tighter and more complicated, and the story more believable.
The way Nicoll develops his characters is also excellent. He lets the traits and characteristics drip out, slowly, as the story matures.
This book really shows one of Scotland’s best new writers really getting into his stride. Nicoll clearly now has confidence in his ability and is more subtle in his approach than he was before. Indeed, it is difficult to think of many better writers who have burst on to the Scottish literary scene in recent years.
And if there is a message that comes through at the end, it is this: watch out for men with moustaches – you never know what they’re hiding.
– The Love and Death of Caterina, by Andrew Nicoll, is published by Quercus, 358pp, £12.99.
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