Purchase
Pushkin Vertigo
May 2026
On Sale: May 26, 2026
Featuring: Alison McCoist; Chuck Gardner
320 pages
ISBN: 1805335472
EAN: 9781805335474
Trade Paperback
Add to Wish List
Mystery Hard Boiled | Science Fiction
DCI Alison McCoist is back in action, and her promotion hasn’t earned her any friends. In fact, it’s made her even more unpopular. Struggling to balance her new responsibilities with the growing pressure to prove herself, McCoist finds herself tangled in a web of crime and corruption.
Chuck Gardner owns a confidential paper-shredding business, but his addiction to gambling has left him deeply in debt. When he stumbles across some incriminating documents, Chuck becomes unwittingly caught in a deadly game of power and deceit.
Meanwhile, McCoist is called to the scene of a gruesome discovery – a rat-nibbled corpse under a flyover. As she investigates, both Chuck and McCoist are sucked into a deadly stramash of gangland wars and police corruption.
Can Chuck solve his gambling and gangster problems before some heed-banger feeds him into his own shredder? And can McCoist claw herself out of this latest shitemire without her own shady dealings coming to light? It might depend on how far she’s prepared to go…
Paperboy is the darkly comic follow-up to the McIlvanney Prize winner, Squeaky Clean. The author, Callum McSorley, has been hailed as one of the most exciting new voices in crime writing, and has been praised by authors like Chris Brookmyre and Kevin Bridges.
| 
© 2003-2026