Overview

Edinburgh journalist Cameron Colley chases corruption with gonzo swagger—until a vigilante begins murdering the very figures he’s condemned in print. As bodies mount and police circle, Cameron’s reporting and private vices twist into a case that may implicate him more deeply than he’ll admit. It’s sleek, nasty, and razor-tense.

Voice & Atmosphere

Banks writes with caustic wit and kinetic bite: late-night newsrooms, hangover mornings, city lights turned cold. The book’s hallmark is its alternating perspectives—including second-person chapters that drag you unnervingly close—giving the whole thing a narcotic, disorienting charge.

Characters

Cameron is charismatic and self-sabotaging, equal parts crusader and hypocrite. Friends, lovers, editors and cops orbit his skid. The killer’s voice—cool, methodical—acts as dark mirror. No one gets off clean; everyone is complicit in something, which is precisely the point.

Themes

Accountability, voyeurism and revenge. Banks probes how media outrage can blur into bloodlust, and how private appetites corrode public ethics. Justice here is contested terrain: who gets to deliver it—and what debt does that incur?

What Worked

• Formal daring: second-person sequences create genuine unease.
• Setting as character: 1990s Edinburgh rendered with slick menace.
• Thematic bite: asks hard questions about power, guilt and the press.

Minor Quibbles

• Violence and sexual content are explicit—effective, but not for every reader.
• Cameron’s self-destruction may test patience even as it deepens the portrait.

Final Thoughts

Dark, stylish and morally thorny, Complicity is a thriller that indicts as it entertains—asking not just whodunnit, but who looked away.

Rating: ★★★★☆ (4/5)