Alice Thompson’s The Existential Detective and Burnt Island could be described as pulp fiction, but they are also two of the best Scottish novels in recent years. To those, add Graham Lironi’s Oh Marina Girl. Like Thompson, Lironi plays with language, character, structure and ideas of intertextuality, using all of the above to wrong foot readers. Although the themes of murder, suicide, kidnap and torture are pitch black, they are presented in contrasting ways; at times with a