The Long Drop review – Denise Mina’s whisky-soaked tale of triple murder

On the bare brick wall backing Jen McGinley’s set – half courtroom, half saloon – there is a faded poster of The Searchers. The whisky-swilling hard men who haunt the clubs and dives of The Long Drop imagine themselves as cowboys: double dealers and grandstanders, full of bluff and bluster; sometimes cosplay baddies, acting as tough as John Wayne, other times the real thing, meting out beatings and sociopathic violence.

This is not Monument Valley but the same Gorbals streets outside the theatre, and Linda McLean’s adaptation of Denise Mina’s true-life crime novel unravels the story of a triple murder. In 1956 Marion Watt, her daughter Vivienne and sister Margaret Brown were shot dead as they slept in their beds in Burnside, South Lanarkshire.

The police suspected Marion’s husband, William Watt, even though he was 90 miles away on the night; he had his alibi, but was shifty with it.

Scotland, Burnside, South Lanarkshire

denise mina, long drop, linda mclean, triple murder, burnside, south lanarkshire, william watt, marion watt, 1956, crime novel