The Blade Artist.

Francis Begbie, the psychotically violent trouble maker from Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting is back!

Following a stint in prison a rehabilitated Franco, now known as Jim Francis, is living in California with his beautiful wife and two young daughters. He has found fame as a successful sculptor whose work is collected by the rich and famous. When one of his sons from a previous relationship is brutally murdered in Edinburgh Franco returns to the mean streets of Leith to attend the funeral and try and find the murderer.

Franco returns there a changed man but has he really changed that much?

The Blade Artist was a novel that I was looking forward to and so I'm sad to say that whilst I didn't entirely dislike it, I didn't enjoy it all that much... It wasn't all bad, there were some good twists and turns to the plot towards the end and I enjoyed all the flashbacks to Franco's childhood which helped to explain his behaviour. But while the whole idea of a yoga practising, egg white eating, spiritual Franco sounds amusing it was a tad far fetched to be believable and, of course, once back on his home turf it wasn't long until he quickly reverted to his true self. And when he did revert to his true self without his Trainspotting companions to put his behaviour into perspective I found his actions to be unnecessarily gory and somewhat repetitive and boring.

Irvine Welsh is one of my very favourite authors but there was something about The Blade Artist that made it feel like a somewhat sloppy book that was written in a rush.

If you are a die hard fan of the author's work you will find some good things here but it is far from being one of his best works as far as I am concerned.