stars to this smart, well-written novel by Iain Banks. Hell, it hurts me not to give it even a 4.5 besides not listing it among my favourites, but I have my reasons for that.

We have Cameron, our doomed hero, who freezes whenever he shouldn’t, runs when he should stand and fight; Cameron who dreams every night of what he sees as his failings and yet, horrific as they are, he doesn’t face the one that hurts him most. The one where he finally gets sent to the Middle East to be a real reporter and yet again he freezes. He is completely unable to tell his readers what he sees. Literate, passionate and well-paced, Complicity succeeds as both an absorbing entertainment and a chilling examination of accountability in a morally bankrupt world * San Francisco Chronicle * This is only the second Banks novel I've read - I'm late to the party here. A friend of mine recently sent me "The Crow Road" as a gift, and I really enjoyed it, so when I spotted this in a charity shop, I thought I'd give it a go. iain banks' sci-fi is fabulously complex and his thrillers can feel almost ostentatiously stripped-down. this is one of the latter. rather good, although rather junior league joyce carol oates as well. specifically j.c. oates under her thriller pseudonym, rosamund smith... he shares the same interest in doubles and obsessions and two characters who reflect each other's passions and weaknesses. there are also some unsurprisingly sharp critiques of materialism and various other classic and modern evils... the victims are a veritable Who's Who of Assholes Deserving Slaughter... the killer, demented as he may be, is something of a robin hood, taken to the next level (down). my main issue with the novel, besides the rather rote use of doubling, is that the lead character becomes somewhat tedious, at least to this reader. still, the writing is solid and the narrative is often riveting. But this is not what he writes. He files stories about war is hell and peace too if you are female in this part of the world. He smokes good dope. He goes home. And this is the failure that haunts him so much he can’t even dream of it.The descriptions of all the murders that take place is excellent - you feel as if you are right there watching the killer do it. It's all bloody & gory with a sexual element to it (sometimes), but it's one of the strongest points of the book. There's also a generous amount of sex in it as well, but it doesn't dampen your view of the book even one bit. Banks claimed in an interview that Complicity is "[a] bit like The Wasp Factory except without the happy ending and redeeming air of cheerfulness". [1] There are scenes in the book telling of the main character's time at university, which is named to be Stirling University, where Iain Banks was himself a student.

The themes of violence and substance abuse in the book, along with the grim ending, seem to point to Banks' growing pacifism. Significant sections of the novel are written in second-person narrative. It's all set in Edinburgh and a range of other Scottish locations, some real, some fictional, but all the real ones are perfectly described, and it's great to read about places I know well. The story was written in the early nineties and is set at that time, describing real events that went on at the time, and this really brings the book to life. That can create a sense of immediacy, but almost amnesiac dislocation. We have to discover what we think, see, know and do. And if we don’t identify with the ‘you’ – if we feel implicated rather than attached – we can be pulled out of the story rather than brought deeper into it.What really made this book stand out and pushed it into a 5 star rating was how Banks told the story. Portions of it were told in second person narrative and, surprisingly, it worked perfectly. I truly felt as though I were in the story and believe me, the second-person narrative scenes are nothing I ever want to experience. Furthermore, he reflects on his awful experience of witnessing the aftermath of the massacre at the ' Highway of Death' in the Gulf War, and covers the deployment of HMS Vanguard, Britain's first Trident nuclear missile submarine.

Its two main characters are Cameron Colley, a journalist on a Scottish newspaper called The Caledonian (which resembles The Scotsman), and a serial murderer whose identity is a mystery. The passages dealing with the journalist are written in the first person, and those dealing with the murderer in the second person, so the novel presents, in alternate chapters, an unusual example of an unreliable narrator. The events take place mostly in and around Edinburgh.An ingeniously constructed tale, done with customary ease, wit and panache. Banks may be a classic story-spinner, purveyor of the proverbial Good Read: but in among all the contrasts, the genre-hopping and the fun, there's a small, serious common purpose to his work * Scotsman * I'm not a Scottish young male journo with a drug habit; this book is grim, brutal, uncompromising and convoluted ...so why do I like this so much? And I’m there, in the one place I’ve hidden from myself’ not that cold day by the hole in the ice or the other day in the sunlit woods near the hole in the hill – days deniable because I was then not yet the me I have become – but just eighteen months ago; the time of my failure and my simple, shaming incapacity to reap and work the obvious power of what I was observing; the place that exposed my incompetence, my hopeless inability to witness.

The mix of humour, horror, emotion, and unflinchingly graphic scenes makes for an incredibly vivid story and the plot is suitably complex that even with these elements toned down it would be a great book, as it is though it's something quite special. It's really the sort of book Irvine Welsh seems to be trying to write, but can't. Set in a real place in Scotland - also the author's homeland - I could easily picture the surroundings thanks to Banks' descriptive imagery. He skillfully entwines interesting plots such as crime, politics and sex with sub-plots such as drug use and computer games to create a rich read that leaves you hooked for life! I found these sub/plots recurring in part or in parallel in the subsequent books I read by Banks, ScienceFiction or not. Thus Banks also spins a weave amongst his chain of books, making the reader fall into his literary trap in the same way that some of the main characters in the books spiral inside the novels. Brutal in the nightmarishness of its gruesome murders and sexual explicitness but never less than a no-holds-barred blitz of a thriller * Daily Mail *There can be multiple viewpoints in a book, not all of which have to belong to a single character. Plus, editors’ and authors’ opinions differ as to which approach works best, and what jars and why. I am a great Banks' fan, and was awaiting this film eagerly. I am quite disappointed, though the film would presumably, if taken at face value and not compared to the novel, be OK. Under suspicion by the police, Colley finds himself involved doubly in the bizarre murders when the killer is revealed. At the end of the book, Colley is diagnosed with lung cancer (a downbeat ending omitted in the film adaptation). An excellent nervy book, both cool and terrifying at its dark centre where the perfect logic of the protagonist is devoid of pity. Banks's muscular style and gruesome imagination make this a fast-moving thriller not to be missed * Daily Telegraph *