Books by Malcolm Mackay

Scotland has been a proudly independent country for centuries. But success has now turned sour. A novel of crime and corruption set in a brooding, rain-swept Scottish city that is compellingly different from the one we think we know.

A novel of crime and corruption is set in a brooding, rain-swept Scottish city burdened by a history that is compellingly different from the one we think we know.

Longlisted for the CWA Steel Dagger for Best Thriller 2015.There's nothing so terrifying as money . . .Two friends, Alex Glass and Oliver Peterkinney, look for work and for escape from their lives spent growing up on Glasgow's most desperate fringes. Soon they will become involved in one of the city's darkest and most dangerous trades. But while one rises quickly up the ranks, the other will fall prey to the industry's addictive lifestyle and ever-spiralling debts.Meanwhile, the three most powerful rivals in the business - Marty Jones, ruthless pimp; Potty Cruickshank, member of the old guard; and Billy Patterson, brutal newcomer - vie for prominence. And now Peterkinney, young and darkly ambitious, is beginning to make himself known . . .Before long, violence will spill out onto the streets, as those at the top make deadly attempts to out-manoeuvre one another for a bigger share of the spoils. Peterkinney and Glass will find themselves at the very centre of this war; and as the pressure builds, each will find their actions - and inactions - coming back to haunt them. But it is those they love who will suffer most . . .From the award-winning author of the Glasgow Trilogy, The Night the Rich Men Burned is a novel for our times, and Malcolm Mackay's most ambitious work to date.

A multi-layered and unnerving portrait of gangland Glasgow, For Those Who Know the Ending is the gripping novel from the award-winning author of The Glasgow Trilogy, Malcolm Mackay. He has to clear thoughts of Joanne and thoughts of the past out of his mind. He has to think about himself, his situation. Think about the next hour . . . In that hour, everything will be decided. It's been almost two hours. Two hours, and Martin Sivok is still tied up, alone in a darkened warehouse; plastic strips digging into the soft flesh of his wrists. He wants them to come back. Get this over with. But he also knows that as soon as they return, this could very well be his ending.Because Martin has messed up. Stolen dirty money he should never have touched. Dirty money that the Jamieson organization, the most dangerous criminal outfit in Glasgow, wants back. Someone has to die for this. And over the next few hours, he has to work out how that somebody can be anyone but him . . .

Winner of the ITV3 Crime Thriller Book Club Best Read Award.Shortlisted for the CWA John Creasey Dagger for Best Debut Crime Novel of the Year and the Saltire Scottish First Book of the Year Award.Longlisted for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger for Best Thriller of the Year and the Theakston's Crime Novel of the Year Award. A twenty-nine-year-old man lives alone in his Glasgow flat. The telephone rings; a casual conversation, but behind this a job offer. The clues are there if you know to look for them. He is an expert. A loner. Freelance. Another job is another job, but what if this organization wants more? A meeting at a club. An offer. A brief. A target: Lewis Winter. It's hard to kill a man well. People who do it well know this. People who do it badly find out the hard way. The hard way has consequences. An arresting, gripping novel of dark relationships and even darker moralities, The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter introduces a remarkable voice in crime fiction.Malcolm Mackay's award-winning The Glasgow Trilogy continues in How A Gunman Says Goodbye and The Sudden Arrival of Violence.

"Impeccable Connections: The Rise and Fall of Richard Whitney" traces the fascinating trajectory of a Massachusetts Brahmin who was president of the New York Stock Exchange in the early 1930s. "Whitney fought every attempt by the Federal Government to regulate the exchange back then because it was "perfect" as it was. Widely regarded even by patrician friends as an insufferable snob, with a background from Groton, Harvard, and New Jersey foxhunting country, after Prohibition he bet all his money on a company called Distilled Liquors Corporation whose principal product was "New Jersey lightning" - hard cider. When lightning failed to strike, this symbol of Wall Street integrity tried to support his company's stock price by borrowing money and secretly stealing clients' assets to cover his mounting debts until the scheme finally collapsed and he went off to prison. A self-righteous confidence man - he couldn't get away with that today, could he? Read this spellbinding book, which repeatedly takes your breath away, and learn that some things never change." -Craig R. Whitney, author of "Living with Guns: A Liberal's case for the Second Amendment.""From the opening scene of Richard Whitney striding on to the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Black Thursday, 1929 Malcolm Mackay had me hooked. The story of Whitney's rise and spectacular fall from grace is one of the great untold stories of American financial history no more. A fascinating book about one of the biggest scandals and scoundrels in American finance. Malcolm Mackay's tale of Richard Whitney's descent from Master of the fox hunt to prisoner at Sing Sing reads like a novel, but is unbelievably true!" -Consuelo Mack, Anchor and Executive Producer, Consuelo Mack WealthTrack"Malcolm MacKay has succeeded at the seemingly impossible task of writing a charming and sympathetic account of an utterly unsympathetic scoundrel. MacKay writes with an insider's knowledge of Richard Whitney (whom he personally knew) and the world in which Whitney lived and worked. The happy result is financial history at its most vivid and readable. " - James Grant, editor of Grant's Interest Rate Observer"That Richard Whitney's extraordinary life of hubris and deceit hasn't been the subject of a book of nonfiction is a bewildering oversight. Malcolm MacKay has filled the void with an irresistible account that he was uniquely qualified to write."-G. Bruce Knecht, author of Grand Ambition: An Extraordinary Yacht, the People Who Built It, and the Millionaire Who Can't Really Afford ItIMPECCABLE CONNECTIONS is both a biography of an important figure and an excellent primer on the reasons for securities regulations that are in today's headlines.Malcolm MacKay is a lawyer and businessman who, as a boy and young man, knew Richard Whitney in his post-prison years. MacKay has thought about Whitney, and why he did what he did, all his life. A graduate of Princeton and Harvard Law School, he lives in Brooklyn, New York.