The Photographer

Craig Robertson

Average Rating 8/10 (1 Review)

The Photographer: Longlisted for the McIlvanney Prize 2018.

The sergeant took some from each box and spread them around the floor so they could all see. Dozens upon dozens of them. DI Rachel Narey’s guess was that there were a few hundred in all.

Photographs.

Many of them were in crowd scenes, some just sitting on a park bench or walking a dog or waiting for a bus or working in shops. They seemed to have no idea they’d been photographed. A dawn raid on the home of a suspected rapist leads to a chilling discovery, a disturbing collection hidden under floorboards. Narey is terrified at the potential scale of what they’ve found and of what brutalities it may signal.

When the photographs are ruled inadmissible as evidence and the man walks free from court, Narey knows she’s let down the victim she’d promised to protect and a monster is back on the streets.

Tony Winter’s young family is under threat from internet trolls and he is determined to protect them whatever the cost. He and Narey are in a race against time to find the unknown victims of the photographer’s lens – before he strikes again.

Review by Ben Macnair (010426) Rating (8/10)

Review by Ben Macnair
Book Source: Not Known
Rating 8/10
In Glasgow, a man has been raping women over a number of years. The Modus Operandi is the same, they are raped at knife point, and injured in the same way, but the suspect always gets away.

During a search of the well to do chief suspect William Broome, a stash of photographs of seemingly random women are found under one of his floorboards. As he gets away under a technicality, the sheer evilness of his crimes is revealed. The couple Narey and Winter (a police officer and photographer respectfully, this is the seventh novel in the series) are now married and have a young daughter, that they want to protect from the brutality and evil that is a part of their everyday lives. As the case against Broome intensifies, so do the attacks on Narey, first through Twitter and then in the real world.

Leah, the women who first filed charges against Broome as her rapist, after seeing his photo in the newspaper, swears vengeance, and then goes missing, there is a race against time, to find both her, and Broome, who has also gone missing. When Broome’s own mother is attacked, she is at first reluctant to press charges, but as more and more evidence mounts up against Broome, she realises that the type of man she has raised is a danger to society. The last ten pages of the book (it is more than 400 pages long) are particularly well drawn and dramatic. The characterisations and descriptions all paint a vivid picture of Glasgow, and the many lines, legal, moral and professional that law enforcers have to cross show the many shades of grey that they face.

Spoiler Alert

The rapist and murderer is caught, also handily having evidence of another unsolved murder at the end, but his bravado is what digs the biggest hole for this well drawn villain, who being outwardly successful, and a highly functioning member of Glasgow society, doesn’t live in any of the stereotypes that he could have easily have fallen into.
Ben Macnair (1st April 2026)