There’s a conspiracy afoot in Lin Anderson’s latest forensic thriller featuring her series character, pathologist Rhona McCloud. It starts with a severed foot washed ashore on a remote Scottish Island. As Rhona McCloud searches for answers, shadowy agencies conspire to stop her investigation and her personal life threatens to self destruct as she uncovers dark secrets in her homeland that have horrific implications for the future of science.

With a bouncy prose style and a great sense of character, Lin Anderson’s third novel featuring Rhona McCloud makes an extremely promising start. With a well rounded central character, who doesn’t suffer from the quirk-itis typical of most forensic heroes and a grey and gritty vision of modern Glasgow in stark contrast to the rural Scotland of the North, Deadly Code grabs you by the hand and pulls you into its world with ease.

The Glasgow she presents is a city of polar opposites; from the jazz club near the forensics centre (run by McCloud’s current squeeze, the slightly dodgy but irrepressibly charming Sean) and Rhona’s own beautiful flat in a well presented area of the city, to the run down and overcrowded tenements where we find two characters who may have more than a passing – if unintentional – involvement in the central conspiracy, Spike and Esther, struggling to live a life with no family, no future, no real income. It’s a touching portrait and when these lives start to cross over, there’s a tension between the relative stability of Rhona’s world and the day-to-day struggle of Spike and Esther. Anderson adeptness at presenting both sides of the city – the affluent and the dirt poor – is touching and grounded in reality.

The reality of Glasgow’s social split is presented particularly in an early scene where Rhona catches the Glasgow Underground back to her flat. She sees a woman nearby in need of help, clearly out of luck and out of money, and she ignores the problem. She feels bad but there is nothing she can do. The detail in the scene is sparse but affecting (and ultimately important to the plot) and manages to tell the reader not only everything they need to know about Rhona from her guilt at not helping, but also everything you need about the city and what it can do to even the most generous and caring of people at times.

Anderson is a very natural writer. She writes effortlessly, holding your attention without drawing undue attention to her obvious skill. She writes naturally, something that perhaps comes from her background as a TV scriptwriter. Her dialogue flows smoothly and naturally, avoiding the typical Scots temptation of writing overdone rural dialect.

Unfortunately, for all of Anderson’s excellent technical skills, the book failed to work for this particular reviewer. As the plot unfolds, and the shadowy conspiracy is revealed, the book began to lose its credibility for me. The complex conspiracy presented in the plot turns the novel from a well presented forensic mystery into a high concept thriller. Sadly, the shift in tone which occurs maybe three quarters of the way through the book failed to pull me along with it. With plot suddenly overtaking character and an international conspiracy – albeit with some personal relevance for Dr McLeod – revealing itself, we are suddenly distanced from the characters. As a result the action ceases to have as much relevance to us. The problem lies in the fact that it all feels too glossy, too high concept and too late in the story. The book itself is too short to deal properly with the conspiracy angle; the themes just too large for the relatively little exploration they are given. And something about the setting just feels wrong. The conspiracy in this book just doesn’t feel comfortable in that Highland setting. It possible certainly, but doesn’t feel entirely plausible. Strangely I feel I could accept in a foreign setting with ease, but set in Scotland it just feels too large, too over the top.

It’s a terrible shame and more my fault than Anderson’s, perhaps, that I find myself unable to accept the central premise of the conspiracy. Anderson’s friendly writing and firm grasp on character and place deserve a plot that felt more in-keeping with its tone. Ultimately, the grand premise of the book – that overtakes the excellent character work done in the first three quarters – spoiled my enjoyment.

It is a shame because, until that shift in plot and scope occurred, I was enjoying Anderson’s work. She is a fine – in fact, an excellent – writer, but if she wants to succeed entirely she either has to widen her scope and pay out the conspiracy or else tighten her focus and present to us the kind of social realism she has it in her ability to portray. She is the kind of writer who could write either style with great aplomb and success but, sadly, Deadly Code falls midway between the two and ultimately one is left a little disappointed. If it wants to properly portray the kind of international shadow conspiracy and high concept thriller world she presents to us in the final third of the book (something that is foreshadowed by the relative weakness of early scenes set in LA compared to those set in Glasgow) Anderson needs to give us the high stakes earlier in the book, take the time to explore the conspiracy rather than presenting it to us in a rush at the end of the novel. At 218 pages, the novel is just too short to present the kind of complex conspiracy it wants to frighten us with. However, I, for one, would like to see her take the tack presented in the opening two thirds where Anderson presents a modern, social Scotland and a dark, no nonsense attitude to death and violence.

Deadly Code is a well written, excellently characterised novel from a talented writer. It is unfortunate that the final quarter of the novel undoes all of Anderson’s good work, but if you can deal with the shift in tone there is a lot here to reward you. Anderson is a writer worth watching, but she needs to find a more consistent tone. This reviewer, despite his reservations on the ending of Deadly Code, will be keeping a close eye out for Anderson’s future work.