Filth

Title: Filth
Author: Irvine Welsh
Published: 1998
Genre: 
Pages: 393


Aww man, I really have to get a grip and start updating, preferably after I've finished a book and not after I've finished four books... adopted two young cats, so that has eaten away a lot of computer time. I don't really mind.

It's been near fifteen years since I last read Filth -in Finnish, working in a quiet-as-a-tomb art gallery- and got the urge to read it again a year or so back, after I saw the movie. It's the story of detective sergeant Bruce Robertson, working for the Edinburgh police. And let me tell you, Bruce is a bit of a cunt. Drugs, alcohol, sex, abuse, unhealthy eating habits, misanthropy, racism and mind games all around. There is no one he will not fuck with, mentally or physically, even with the... rash... going on downstairs.

Christmas is coming, and so is Bruce's annual holiday in Amsterdam, when a tourist gets himself brutally killed, and the case is dropped on DS Robertson. Like the good copper he is, Bruce does his best to worm out of it, and to do as little actual work as possible. Whoring, drinking and cocaine are so much more fun!

As  much as I do like a good anti-hero, Bruce did really disgust me several times. Had I not known how the whole story goes and what's going on in that deranged head and body of his, I might have even considered not finishing the book. But just maybe. What a train wreck you are, Bruce.


   The games are the only way you can survive the job. Everybody has their wee vanities, their own little conceits. My one is that nobody plays the games like me, Bruce Robertson. D.S. Robertson, soon to be D.I. Robertson. 
   The games are always, repeat, always, being played. Most times, in any organisation, it's expedient not to acknowledge their existence. But they're always there. Like now. Now I'm sitting with a bad nut and Toal's thriving on this. I've been fucking busy and he's told me to be here, not asked, mind you, told. I got it all from Ray Lennox who was first on the scene with some uniformed spastics. Aye, I got it all from young Ray but Toal of course needs his audience. Behind the times Toalie boy, be-hind the blessed times.