With the festive season almost upon him, Detective Sergeant Bruce Robertson is winding down at work and gearing up socially-kicking off Christmas with a week os sex and drugs in Amsterdam. There are irritating flies in the ointment though, including a missing wife (and the resulting domestic squalor), a nagging cocaine habit a dramatic deterioration in his genital health, and a string if increasingly demanding extra-marital affairs. The last thing he needs, on top of all these, is a messy murder to solve. Still, it will mean plenty of over-time, a chance to stitch up colleagues and finally clinch the promo-tion he craves. But as this single-minded career cop spirals through the lower reaches of degredation and evil, he encounters opposition-in the form of truth and ethical conscience-from the most unexpected quarter of all- his anus. With such an adversary you can run, but you just can`t hide. Things are beginning to go badly for D. S but in an Irvine Welsh book nothing is ever so bad that it can`t gat worse. . . In Bruce Robertson, Welsh has created on eof the most corrupt, misanth-ropic characters in contemporary fiction, and has written a dark, disturbing and very funny novel a