Final thoughts on Exile

So I finished Exile and can really get going on Left Hand of Darkness for book club now.

This definitely had the feel of  a transition book but I really loved it by the end. I even was a bit surprised by the ending. Ann Harris turns out to be alive and in hiding from Frank Toner. A nameless junkie is dead in her place. Kilty Goldfarb is Maureen's pal and I hope she turns up in the last book. Maureen is contemplating killing her Dad to spare her baby niece from being molested too, Mark Doyle is trying to talk her out of it. Leslie is beginning to realize her boyfriend is a douchebag. And Maureen's brush with the drug dealing network makes her look at her ex-dealing brother Liam a little differently now (that and him cheating on his girlfriend when they were in London.)  And a dealer named Neil Hutton got shot up the arse for stealing drugs from Frank Toner. I wonder how literal that is. And you just know, that's probably happened to someone somewhere.

And the Glasgow police have their hands on crazy Angus's threatening letters to Maureen which implicate her in his beating and imprisonment in the last book. I wonder how their seizure of them can be legal but I guess it is under Scottish law since Denise Mina used to lecture on criminology at University.

And oh, the end with poor Vikram. Kind of heart-breaking. I want to read the last book but I'm going to wait a bit and stretch it out.