Filth (1998)
By the time this novel was published, Welsh was such a hot property that one reviewer reported being offered cash in a bar for their advance copy of the book. The success he was enjoying, Welsh said, made him want to write something “completely incendiary, totally crazy,” and with Filth he delivered a novel that fulfils the promise of its title.
Detective Sergeant Bruce Robertson is Welsh’s most gruesome and grotesque narrator to date: violent, corrupt, sexually omnivorous and crippled with eczema and piles. His narrative of guilt and fear is interrupted by the voice of a tapeworm living in his gut, eating him up from inside and literally blocking out Robertson’s words on the page.
You might say that Filth explores the ever-current issue of mental illness, as the 2014 film adaptation more explicitly did, or the stain of racism in society – a Black journalist’s murder provides one plot point – but at heart it’s simply a chance for Welsh to provide the blackest of comedy from an anti-hero we love to hate.
Crime (2008)
This book may have another blunt monosyllable for its title, but it marks a departure for Welsh in more ways than one. The setting is mostly Welsh’s adopted home of Miami (where he’d return to in 2014’s The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins) and the main character, for once, really is more hero than anti-hero.
Cop Ray Lennox, who was a secondary character in Filth, is taking a break to Florida to recover from dealing with a horrific child sex crime. “His thoughts are like a landslide,” but as he descends into a coke-fuelled bed-hopping spiral – how else would a Welsh character relax? – he realises his new pals are part of a paedophile ring.
The serious, sober treatment Welsh gives this distressing topic makes Crime a more restrained read than most of his novels, and it’s the book’s indelible moral core as much as the horror that keeps the pages turning.
