Charlie Grant, an intense young student at Glasgow University watches his father die. Overwhelmed by the memory of this humble yet dignified death, Charlie is left to face his own fierce resentment for his adulterous mother. With shades of Hamlet and Camus, William McIlvanney 's first novel is a revelatory portrait of youth, of society and of family. About author(s): William McIlvanney 's first novel, Remedy is None , won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize and with Docherty he won the Whitbread Award for Fiction. Laidlaw and The Papers of Tony Veitch both gained Silver Daggers from the Crime Writers' Association. Strange Loyalties , the third in the Detective Laidlaw trilogy, won the Glasgow Herald's People's Prize. He died in December 2015.